


Apple Pie and Dreams

by asolitarygrape



Series: With you [2]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, F/M, Flashbacks, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, excessive wildlife documentaries, therapeutic responses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-19 03:03:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3593934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asolitarygrape/pseuds/asolitarygrape
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Our hero, Captain America, finds himself fighting his greatest foe yet! The economic downturn as stateside gives up their sugar—shaking fists at those military fiends! Supplies run low, the loss of fortitude as men lay down their lives, thousands go hungry, bleeding, crying out—but not our hero, Captain America! He’ s an ar-teeest. Why, he’s no sap. He knows the real money is to be made in drawing funny pictures! That’s how we beat them Nazis!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The soldier sighed, peering into Steve's apartment from the dim hall. The Tower was still under lock down, however Steve had thankfully given the soldier the pass code before they had departed for Washington. The soldier sighed again, wondering in some small fragments just how closely it was he resembled a cartoon cat with a dislike of Mondays. Couldn't remember its name, probably a President's name. Everyone around here has a president's name.

He trudged out of the poorly lit hallway, with it's blue track lighting and it's disembodied voice. He gave a tired 'Pah' at JARVIS as the heavy metal door pulled into its casing and locked.

Rubbing his face, he immediately set to removing his shoulder holster, dropping the set of knives, letting the kevlar thunk onto the floor with a particularly disheartening thunk. Steve might have protested, might have pointed out it was hard wood, might have pointed out that dropping 40lbs on it suddenly was considered a 'bad move' that would have scratched his floor up. But Steve wasn't with him.

The soldier peeled off his shirt, Steve's borrowed shirt, and nearly became trapped as it was pulled over his head. Gave a protesting 'Ack!' and shimmied his arms until it had wormed itself off of his torso. He considered that formal complaint he had meant to place that Steve Rogers needed to stop wearing such tight shirts.

The soldier dropped his pants, dipped his toe out of them and shook his body like a wet dog. He blearily yawned and smacked his jaw, and looked around the room, cracking his stiff neck to the side. He trudged past the living room, into the bedroom, into the bathroom, with a familiarity that meticulously scanning the perimeter of your every location afforded. He stepped into the bathroom, snapped on the lighting, and trudged with equal finesse into the shower stall.

Hit with a cool seventy two degrees that was automated to the weighted scale on the tub floor, the soldier lowered his head and grumbled. He didn't think he'd made any coherent words, hadn't been planning to. Didn't have anyone to talk to.

It came slowly in waves of recognition. The soldier rocked on his heels and kept his eyes squeezed shut until his only sensations were the small circles he made with his shifting center of weight, his world closed off to him. And he thought, quietly, "This is reality, this is the present, this is where you are and when you are and there is nothing else."

Deep breaths, stillness. Accepting pain, working with suffering. Life is a bee sting. Surprising, upsetting, stinging, and then ultimately you accept it or die.

The steam from the shower began to fog the glass. The soldier looked at the fog as it grew, and experimentally turned the faucet up to a higher temperature. He stopped it at 91 degrees, the flesh seam of his metallic arm going pink as his breaths became shorter and pressured, the heat warming the arm enough to barely sear the flesh of his shoulder. The soldier huffed, reconsidered whether or not this qualified under 'other self harm' and then lowered the temperature to 80 degrees.

He considered, a moment, the appearance of a boiled chicken. The way meat eventually comes to fall off of the bone and shred itself into ribbons. The soldier looked warily to his feet, damn hobbit feet, at the bones visible through the knotty flesh. He considered how long and how hot the water would need to run before he shredded into nothing. Disassembled.

The soldier stepped back out of the shower. He half expected, glancing at the bathroom around him, to see messages written into the fog of the mirror. A smiley face, a happy note, some small affirmation Steve might have written to himself. The cream colored walls glistened at the moisture in the air, but the mirror itself was a white landscape, an open canvas. 

The soldier stepped toward it under the pretense of seeking out a towel from the cabinet below the sink--a terrible place to keep towels, but a decent excuse to look into the mirror through misted glass. He reached out one metal finger, water already dripping down the surface from the heat of his hand. He drew a smile. He stepped back and appreciated his work. The soldier turned and stalked naked into the bedroom.

He couldn't find a towel--should have thought to ask at some point. He hadn't planned to return, necessarily. Steve wasn't here, which made the apartment more appealing. No Avengers were here--still all off in Washington doing what Avengers do; sitting in hospital beds, going through debriefings, receiving their metals from Princess Leia. The Tower was the most logical place to hide from all of that, so Bucky had strode on in, not expecting to be interrupted for some time.

He fished through Steve's closet. All this money and Stark wouldn't give you a walk-in? He harrumphed as he scoured through a shelving unit of folded shirts that would have fit teenagers--not super soldiers. The soldier found himself mocking their perfect folds. He probably ironed them. He fished out the least offensively tight shirt he could find, stole another pair of joggers, and glanced in Steve's mirror as he tied back his hair with his bag clip. 

Staring back was a halfway clean, slightly pink faced man who looked nearly presentable. In fact, if you managed to completely ignore the metal protuberance sticking from his shoulder, he might be someone you'd approach. He harrumphed at this thought and crossed over to Steve's bed, throwing himself down.

His pillow, for he had silent claimed it, was still where he left it. The soldier immediately tucked himself around it as if it were his long lost child and he must protect it from the outside world. He half buried his face into the pillow baby while reaching blindly for the remote. All the technology in the world, he muttered to no one. If it was Stark's T.V. in Stark's Tower, he should be able to just yell channels at the damn thing.

The soldier reconsidered this. He probably could just tell the T.V. to turn on. He thought about this for a minute until his blind groping saw success and his flesh hand clamped down around a grooved rectangle which he brought to his face. Grateful to find that this was the remote, he fidgeted with the worn buttons until the screen at the foot of the bed bzzpt into life.

The soldier exhaled and let pillow baby take his weight. He melted into the bed, thinking it was too damn soft but also just right. And, a very disgruntled Goldilocks, he flipped lazily through a few channels of reports about the battle in Washington.

"---After the arrival of Captain America---"

"Meh," The soldier changed the channel.

"---Device from Asgard, replicated by--"

"Meh," The soldier changed the channel.

"---Previously thought dead---"

"Meh," The soldier changed the channel.

"---season, these birds gather in large nesting colonies at the coasts of Argentina." The voice over actor droned. The soldier blinked and lowered the remote, lifting his face fully out of pillow baby. On the screen several penguins waddled on a beach, huddling together with their mates. Black backs and white abdomens, scooping side to side as the birds trudged along. Across what the soldier assumed would be the bird's shoulders was a wide white band, a white band around it's neck connecting to a band that went up behind it's eyes. "Two eggs are laid. Incubation lasts 39-42 days, a task which parents share."

The soldier observed the father penguin and mother penguin changing the guard, shifting about on the beach with their impractical knee-less legs.

"Every ten to fifteen days the parents will change shift. The young are cared for by both parents for the first month of life. Occasionally, only one chick is cared for and the other--,"

"Meh," the soldier changed the channel.

"---In critical condition." The newscaster finished. The soldier lifted his head, the image of Steve Rogers still on screen. He blinked, wondering which important part of that sentence he had missed. The important part where several bystanders were in critical condition? The part where someone else was in critical condition?

"Further information will be released to the public as necessary regarding the status of Captain Rogers." The news caster confirmed.

The soldier narrowed his eyes at this African American woman, in her red blazer, with her dumb face. He screwed up his face, "He was fine when I left."

The newscaster had, however, begun talking about some new topic that was clearly as equally important to her as a hospitalized Captain America. The soldier became frustrated and changed the channel several times. No one else was discussing Captain Rogers. He considered putting the penguins back on then grumbled and turned the television off all together.

He hugged pillow baby and considered things. He'd given Steve his opportunity to be free, and Steve had botched it. No skin off of his nose. Steve had been fine when the soldier had left him. He really was an idiot, getting himself into more shit without any back up. He probably dove in front of some little old lady to stop falling debris; stopped to buy some goddamn girl scout cookies and ended up saving a troop from an errant Ultron decoy. Stooped to kiss some baby or sign some autograph, give some cute mom whose home had been destroyed and found herself recently single his number and got punched out by resurrected dad.

Stupid, the solider opined.

Welp, maybe that meant he wouldn't get evicted from this apartment as quickly as he'd thought.

But then it hit him again. The new emotions. They began as a worry, a line by his mouth that he didn't think was normally there. His mouth pulled into a thin line and there was a throb at his chest. The first time it had happened he had thought he was sick. He worried that Hydra had put some kill switch into his blood and that he hadn't been properly inoculated since abandoning his post. Like goddamn Snake Plissken. But the feeling had dissipated and grown dull and he had realized, with time, that it hadn't been some acute attack at all. It seemed always there, just beneath the surface, and seemingly random things triggered it.

The first time it had begun as a sharp pain in his chest, the feeling of needles pressing themselves into the connective meat between his ribs and wedging into soft tissues. The needles then scissored themselves as if to break his rib cage apart and tore through that flesh with determination. His bones had ached and his stomach had hollowed and his head had emptied, and he had felt despair. But it wasn't despair, not as he knew it. Not the fear tinged into melancholy; the learned helplessness of a beaten dog. This was a separate misery, one that could come with elation and mania. One that could turn like a light between cold and painful into warmth and thrill, where the same pain could twist into an upbeat adrenaline surge.

Now when the soldier put his face down into pillow baby, he dug in his fingers and he grit his teeth against the sudden dull throb at his chest. A balloon seemed to inflate in him, pushing all of his organs aside. He worried, wondering what this meant. 

Calm, he told himself. "This is reality, this is the present, this is where you are and when you are and there is nothing else."

Several deep breaths later he turned his face away from pillow baby, tearful but maintaining himself. The soldier pushed himself up and walked into the bathroom, seeing the melting smiley face as a sick joke. 

He cupped cold water in his hands and groaned, straightening his spine and staring into the dying mist clinging to the mirror. The face on the other side of the glass was a more sallow color than the heated pink skin he'd had stepping out of the shower. He nearly looked grey, bringing a hand to his chest while he grimaced. 

He inherently blamed Steve Rogers.

He'd never had these worry lines before the man on the bridge, not in a lifetime that he remembered. Hid eyes traced along the items laid out on the sink. A ratty looking toothbrush, a mangled looking tube of toothpaste with blue gel crusted over the cap, various other tooth cleaning devices--needed to keep Captain America looking like a movie star, after all--and a pile of razor heads. Pretty messy, really. Not what you'd expect from Apple Pie and Dreams.

Not like the rest of the apartment, for the matter. It looked more like a hotel suite than a living space. Too clean, too sparse. The soldier felt a sigh rolling through him again as more of those new emotions rutted into his stomach. Maybe they wouldn't have seemed so drastic if he was used to having them. Used to feeling that swell in his chest when he was happy or that closing fist when he was sad. 

For all of his sensations the soldier decided two things 1, he did not like the possibility that Steve had gotten hurt and 2, he did not like having his new emotions. He worried that they pushed out the person he was, because someone new was coming in.

The soldier returned to the bed, falling back on it with a sigh. He looked side to side, around the blank little space. The cream colored walls, the dull blue bed spread. He wondered if the smell, the spiced carnation of after shave, was how Steve smelled. 

The bureau which the T.V. sat on had several drawers. A nice wood finish, something dark. Oak, the soldier decided, having no reference point for this. It seemed to be the only real piece of furniture that reminded the soldier of Steve. The room had end tables, had mirrors, the bench by the window, lamps, fans, even a damn fern, but all of that seemed very Stark. White and crisp and clean. Modern and expensive. The bureau was wood and earth and Steve.

It was oddly comforting.

The soldier studied it for several minutes, noting the strange pull in his bones. The bureau---why was he using that word? chest, dresser, goddamn chifforobe--was familiar. It was a very dark wood, enough that it seemed someone had once considered painting it black, or maybe had just given it too much varnish. There had once been a place for a mirror to sit atop of it, but when it had been refinished this was torn down in place for the television stand. The soldier wondered if Steve had done this himself; if he had seen a dresser that looked like something he remembered in 1920 and bought it on the spot, sanding it down and cleaning it himself. That seemed like something Steve Rogers would do.

It was the most Steve thing the soldier had laid eyes on. Maybe more things--more Steve things--were in the living room, but the living room didn't smell like cinnamon and cloves. The soldier was inclined to stay where he was.

The bottom drawer was slightly off kilter. The soldier examined this before thinking to himself, surely, he ought to right it. He stepped off of the bed and seated himself in front of the bureau. Dipping his head to the side as he fit his hands over the lip of the bottom drawer, not wanting to use the handles because it seemed obvious and he had learned over years not to trust obvious. 

The wood rattled out gently, scraping over the wood of the frame. The bottom drawer was a mess of clothing that hadn't been folded so much as crammed, which the soldier raised an eyebrow at. Maybe someone else had been doing the ironing in the closet.

He poked his fingers through the knotted shirts, thinking he'd much rather be wearing one of these...Old army clothes, under shirts, random pairs of boxers, and under a series of ratty gym shorts, a metal box. The soldier ran his hand over it, tossing aside the clothing. 

The lock box was a red, rusted, steel cube that fit too well into the hiding space. The soldier gingerly pulled it up from the drawer and rested it in his lap.

The clasp had a padlock, but it was nothing too complicated. The soldier didn't think twice of pulling it apart with a clink of a metal hand. Upon reflection he didn't think Steve would appreciate this, but if Steve really felt anything in this Tower was private than he was a lost cause. SHIELD had probably been in and out of this box a million times. 

Tossing aside the padlock, the soldier unhinged the lock box with a loud squeal. He exhaled, looking over the contents with a blankness. His mind worked over the contents, seeing several small bound books, a wrapped pile of letters. He blinked.

The soldier had seen many letters exchanged between Steve Rogers and family, friends, individuals state side, but rarely if any anything exchanged between Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.

He lifted out a cardboard book with a woven binding, tipping it side to side to inspect it. He'd gotten to be quite the expert in Steve Rogers memorabilia over the past year and had only ever found one other sketchbook.

This one was remarkably cheap. Not as nice as the one he had seen in Indiana. Much as in Indiana, he had a shiver run through him--new emotions--that Steve had touched this. Well duh, Steve had touched probably every damn thing in this room. What made this really special was that Bucky had touched it. The soldier wasn't sure how he knew, but he knew immediately. His hands knew.

The first page showed a perfectly ordinary tree, scratched into an unsmooth paper with charcoal lines. It seemed to be made up of squiggles and shapes that implied leaves without needing any time spent drawing actual leaves. There were smudges and finger prints along the edge of the paper, ones which the soldier hesitantly fit his hand over, looking to see if the pads of his fingers were the right size. He flinched, feeling like Cinderella moments before the prince realized that she belonged to his slipper. Did Cinderella ever question it? Did she have a moment’s hesitation where she saw the slipper and—despite knowing it was hers—she questioned if time and reality could bend to work against her? The soldier did. He had known for a fact that time and reality were very untrustworthy creatures, actively seeking to confuse him. To make him doubt. He fitted his thumb over the smudge and exhaled. Cinderella, identified. Only in the soldier’s case, this brought on further confusion. Here was a thumb print he hadn’t left, but belonged to his hand.

He turned the page.

He began to move ahead to the next image when he cocked his head to the side. There was a note scribbled on the back of the tree. Messy hand writing, left handed, smudges everywhere.

_No more charcoal. Too messy._

As if to prove a point a hand had been stamped over the pen marks. The soldier again fitted his hand over his one, taking a hesitant breath. It fit. His hand writing? Or someone who’d used his hand. The soldier looked quizzically at his metal arm. Maybe his writing would be neater now, aided by technology and all. He’d never tested it out that he could remember.

The image across from the note and hand print had a charcoal shadow of the handprint mirrored. This image was graphite, however. With penned edges. It was a hand, drawing. As if Steve had looked at his hand for a reference while drawing his hand. It…wasn’t great. Steve’s hands were always large, even when he was small, and this hand seemed oddly proportioned. The soldier understood it was supposed to be a hand, that wasn’t the issue, but the pencil in the hand looked small, seemed to bend in the middle adding to an illusion that the hand was enormous. There were details that made the bones jut out, the nails had a shading to them that made them seem like glass. The soldier flipped the page.

_Hercules takes up sketching…_

The soldier nearly chuckled. The opposite sketch was a figure drawing; a nude male with his back turned toward the audience. His spine curved as he stretched to hide his face, crouched in a sitting position. The soldier squinted his eyes a few moments while some regrowing neurons fired at one another and lost the chemicals across the synapse. The soldier tilted his head. He knew this. He’d seen this figure, somewhere.

_Hercules? So Literal._

The soldier stared at Barnes’ handwriting, as if he might force something to click in his head. He knew this statue. Why would he know this statue? Why did he know that there was supposed to be a lion skin in the figure’s hand, but that his back was turned away? That there was a club in his other paw, his face was stern. So, it’s a statue of Hercules. Where would the soldier have seen something like that? Some corner where he had lurked in Europe, watching for a target to pass by? Some museum he had infiltrated, some private collection? It was somewhere Steve and Bucky would have seen it, he reasoned. Somewhere in New York.

Frustrated, he turned the page. Bowl of fruit.

_Am I supposed to be impressed?_

Turned the page. A skyline, but one dated back a century. Shaded light coming down between buildings, the view of a grocery store placard above shop windows, a brick building extending above. The soldier turned his head, as the building had been drawn off balance, and he found himself staring deeply into that window expecting a small graphite figure to turn on a light. He caught himself leering and came back into his body. This is reality, this is when and where I am. Taking a shaky breath he turned the page.

_More of these._

Steve must have gotten excited. The next several pages were filled with Brooklyn in the 1930s. The construction crews around Alley Park, a plaque of Theodore Roosevelt discussing the parks department, more views of the grocery store, of restaurants, of a school yard. The soldier tilted his head at each one of these as neurons tried and failed to find each other in the empty grey matter. He found himself getting more and more frustrated, some of those new emotions stabbing into his ribs. He slowed himself back down. Here and now, he mantra’d into the dark ink filling his head. The messages between Bucky and Steve made him more anxious, more fire rising up his throat.

_You’re getting cocky._

_Should’ve drawn Ted._

_Looks like home._

_I hate that corner, almost got run over._

_Ms. Fosmire always was a bitch._

The soldier put his head down and was breathing hard, ignoring his eyes and trying to shut them out behind the blackness of eyelids. He counted back from ten, looked at the image in front of him. It was an unfinished figure drawing of a boy. Its shape certainly seemed like it should be a boy. Languid, thin, flat and angular in places. It was a dynamic pose, the boy reaching into the air, one hand curled around his belly like a dancer. The soldier scanned his eyes over it several times. There was a heat rising in his stomach as he turned the picture, refocused on the lines. It was very fluid, very rough, yet the soldier expected it to move. He exhaled, bringing his nose up to the paper. Nope, he did not remember this. He turned it over.

_Jerkface, if you’re going to make me sad, don’t do it with your damn drawings and fight me like a man._

The soldier raised an eyebrow. He imagined Steve had raised an eyebrow, because the drawing opposite was that of the same figure in a new pose, holding a sign above his head, craning his neck toward it as his back arched. It said ‘You have a problem with art?’

_Shut up._

The next drawing was another view of the grocery store. A few scattered outlines, only partially detailed, but the soldier could recognize the shapes from the other sketches. He turned his head slowly, trying to get a new perspective on the grocery store. The back read,

_I miss home._

The soldier lifted his shoulders up, readjusted himself on the floor. He flipped several pages back to the front of the sketch book, trying to find a date. In the front of the cardboard binding was a name, scribbled in Steve’s slanted writing. But no date. The soldier lifted the sketchbook as a whole, investigated around it for printer’s marks. It was too old and cheap for that, he harrumphed. He couldn’t find a year, a company. It was just a blank little book. The soldier lowered it, turned back to the most recent crease in the binding. He stared at ‘I miss home’. He wracked his brain for things Steve had said to him over the past week. If you were going to tell your best friend about a life he didn’t remember, where would you start? The small things, the things not in the textbooks. Then fix the textbooks.

The soldier took a deep breath. Bucky Barnes missed home. A picture of a boy dancing made him sad. He spoke in terse, sarcastic comments. The soldier reconsidered these. He looked at the  
next sketch.

A woman sitting at a kitchen table, her face down and focused on the sewing in her lap, a small kitten mewling up against her leg. The soldier blinked. Steve was good. Maybe he could still use a few years of art school, if they could have ever afforded it, but there was something simple about the lines and about the subjects. It made the solider…sad? Could he be sad if he didn’t know why?—he asked purely rhetorically. The soldier turned the page.

_You’re not helping. I want to go home. I want to get the hell out of here. be. I miss_

The soldier felt exceptionally sad. He raised his eyebrows at Bucky’s writing and mumbled, “Where’s that?”

Steve and Bucky must have gotten into an argument because the next page had no drawing. Just a lot of scribbles and crossed out comments. Steve didn’t stick to the simple line-through method of crossing something out. He obliterated it from the page in a fury of slate colored stokes. He nearly pushed the pencil through the paper. In two spots he succeeded. There was no note on the back of this page. But it hadn’t been torn out, the soldier thought. He wondered if the scribbling had happened before or after Barnes had seen the message.

The next drawing was of a boy, lying face down. He was sprawled as if he had been swimming across an invisible plane of the page, and now floated, drowned. The soldier’s eyes nearly rolled out of his head.

_Stop being so dramatic_ , Bucky agreed. _I’m not I don’t I wish you would just go back to It **kills** me when you do this shit._

The next drawing was of a robot destroying a random cityscape. It shot lasers from its eyes and held a small plane in one claw. Fires sprang in the world around it. The soldier nearly chuckled. Look at you, Steve Rogers, predicting the future.

_Don’t quit your day job._

The opposite picture was Captain America. The soldier nearly jumped in surprise. An early version of the Captain, pulling the pockets of his costume inside out and sighing, a sad expression on his mostly-masked face. He prominently displayed his Hoover flags like the Monopoly Man did. His lip trembled, the image was so pathetic.

_Our hero, Captain America, finds himself fighting his greatest foe yet! The economic downturn as stateside gives up their sugar—shaking fists at those military fiends! Supplies run low, the loss of fortitude as men lay down their lives, thousands go hungry, bleeding, crying out—but not our hero, Captain America! He’ s an ar-teeest. Why, he’s no sap. He knows the real money is to be made in drawing funny pictures! That’s how we beat them Nazis!_

The soldier looked to the adjoining picture. Captain America sat on an arm chair made of dollar signs smoking a pipe, looking skeptically over his reading glasses and lowering his newspaper. A word bubble, “When I don’t feel like a strenuous day of art, I look to the life of leisure in the military.”

The soldier smiled. It caught him off guard at first and he needed to check several cues, but he had smiled. He blinked at the gesture, feeling how it felt on his face. He turned the page.

_Our tragic hero—where he belongs. ---a sad state, this world. Very sad. Perhaps someday, with enough pillows and bottles of scotch, he might—just might—be able to forget the hardships he endures. Sucha unpleasant situation to find himself in when military personnel, like our everyman Steve Rogers here, gets to actually sleep on rocks and in washed out tents! Why, if I could choose a life, I’d most definitely rather hardtack and beer to your peasant caviar and champagne!_

The next drawing was a figure lying back on a cot. The soldier shifted his head to the side. The figure was in the very early stages of sketch, with no facial features. It seemed to be a practice sketch for how to draw clothing, since the only truly detailed part were the folds of fabric over the figure’s body. Military dress. The soldier shifted his head to the other side, watching the figure cautiously. Arm tucked behind his head, face turned away, hint of an upturned lip but no real facial details. 

He flipped it over, no comment from Bucky. 

The next drawing was three figures, sitting around in a loose circle. By proportions the soldier could imagine that each was an adult male. That Figure 1 leant in to listen to Figure 2, while Figure 3 leant in to whisper into Figure 2’s ear. Figure 2 had a grand smile and was leaning back and gesturing. Military dress on them all. Some light details around their clothing, figures, hands. No distinct faces. The soldier could tell, however, that Figure 2 was telling a story. That the three figures were sharing war stories, laughing at their impossible situation. 

The soldier turned the page, no comment from Bucky.

The third drawing was a man, pulling a bandage tight around his thigh, making a face full of regrets and anger. He was only wearing an undershirt, which had the soldier guessing that he was using his shirt as the bandage. The soldier knew by now the loose details around his clothing; the way his hands were too square as if he’d broken his thumbs at some point in life; the way his face seemed always turned away. Steve had been drawing Bucky, and Bucky didn’t want to comment on it. On the back of this drawing, however,

_I keep staring at where the bullet went through. It hurts knowing it’s inside of me. That I can’t get the war out._

The soldier put his face down again. Those goddamn new emotions. He began to ache, wanting the news to switch itself back on and announce Steve Rogers’ miraculous recovery—that the newscaster from before was a fraud and that she had been fired and that her car had exploded in the parking lot.


	2. Chapter 2

2  
Peggy Carter had the best of intentions. Many people do, it turns out.

She'd pulled Barnes aside with the very best of intentions, the most noble of intentions, the intention to help Steve Rogers--and really, what a swell guy. Who wouldn't want to help Steve Rogers? He was the All-American man, the perfect underdog that everyone could get behind. A shrimp from Brooklyn with a will and determination that matched the best parts of the American spirit. Ingenuity, strength of character, perseverance. What more could the war effort look for in a symbol?

Someone willing to storm into the fire of hell and then do a second tour. Someone who doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, but who gets it ripped out and put on display anyhow. Someone who doesn't meet your eyes when he's speaking, because he's learned not to check to see who's listening; who rarely smiles and when he does it seems plastered on and for the crowd. Steve was somebody who could be mean when he wanted to, and nice when he wanted to, but was always stand offish and always two shades shy of being genuine.

He couldn't show you his cards because he thought you might smack them out of his hand.

Peggy thought this was the most precious thing of all. 

Few people could see Steve the way she did. He didn't have many acquaintances, fewer friends. He didn't seem to like crowds, even when he could pull a crooked smile and let himself be happy for once, there was a hesitation. A flicker of it won't last. 

Which was why it had to be Barnes, you see. Which is why she had to convince him, had to let him know it wasn't about America or Europe or selling war bonds or bringing home the troops. It had to be about Steve from start to finish.

Steve may have been incorruptible, but he was human.

This was being explained by Peggy Carter in a prepared speech, as she stared down the barrel of a camera reel in Howard Stark's office. Her image flickered with the poor quality of film, occasionally warping, her voice dropping out.

The video was paused and Steve was staring into a sepia mirror where Peggy Carter was looking back with a taut mouth, her dark lipstick matching her darkened eyebrows. Her frighteningly symmetrical face looking tired, her hair loose from it's usual pin curls. The image flickered. There was such a weight to her eyes, as if they carried all the grief of the nation. All the money in the world and Howard Stark couldn't afford a decent covert film studio, Steve thought quietly. 

He drew a slow breath, looking into that face, and wondering whether any of it had been real. He pressed play.

"Steve couldn't know, and that was the most difficult part for us all." She stared down the camera lens with integrity. A sweet voice, breathy with emotions that normally stayed tucked behind a deceptive soft flesh exterior. She was hard, Steve thought, tougher than anyone he knew. "The whole point, Steve's personality, wouldn't mesh with the endgame. 

"Steve had been chosen by Dr. Erksine because of who he was, because he was incorruptible, and sweet, and fragile. A fragile man in a new body is much more grateful than someone who always believed themselves invincible. But this also meant he could be controlled, naive, and this was what the government counted on when they ordered a batch of super soldiers. But they ended up with only Steve.

"And so Steve needed a shield. The ones we felt he would trust, who wanted to protect him, accepted Project Shield. It had to be a small group, if anything we were doing leaked into the intelligence community we would have all disappeared.

"Our aim was to keep Steve Rogers separate from Captain America. Rather than allowing them to be the same person, to have Steve get swallowed up the by the uniform. 

"So when orders came through the wire that we knew Steve could not accept, but that we knew needed to be carried out or Steve would be at risk, we had an alternative plan.

"That was how it all started, SHIELD. The agents willing to act out in the best interests of the intelligence community, regardless of morals.

"I am one of them. I was one of them, the first in a way." Peggy pursued her lips immodestly. She seemed a bit flustered, spurred by her confession. "Moral ambiguity was an asset to our end. And when I felt I could not carry out my task, I had Howard to turn to. Howard who had his own legions of scientists and of course Mr. Jarvis. My other contacts in the SSR, over time. We slowly built an empire.

"Of course I now see what has become of that empire," She gave a tight lipped smile, her voice becoming pointed. "It's dumb of me to call it that. It feels so smug, thinking that what we did was excusable. In light of Steve, and James.

"After James died, the summer soldier initiative kept on going in his wake. More people dressing up like Steve for the government, to keep the charade going. People controlled by the SSR. William Naslund, Jeffery Mace. They were good men. William died in action. I heard poor Jeffery has cancer now. 

"And of course how could I forget Burnside. He was fucking crazy," Peg's voice cracked and Steve blushed. Nearly a century later and he still didn't understand how it was Peggy made him anxious. She never cursed, he thought quietly. Burnside must have been something else.

Peggy rolled her eyes, "None of them were Steve Rogers," She paused and shook her head, eye lids fluttering, "The _real, legal Steve Rogers._ Though not for lack of trying.

"They lacked the qualities that Erksine had wanted. They were drawn to the scientific mystery or the loyalism. The only real man who might have deserved Steve's uniform was James, and we lost him first.

"After the Burnside fiasco, we retired the character completely. We let the world know, Captain America is dead." Peggy shuddered at saying. "But SHIELD could live on in his wake. We were so self righteous. And stupidly, stupidly, we thought the summer soldier--"

"Steve," a voice interrupted. Steve protectively tapped the screen so that Peggy paused mid thought. He turned from the projection against the wall. Wilson leant against the doorframe, his hands at his pockets, a knowing and disapproving look gracing his features. Steve gave a small, crooked smile--the sort Peggy had talked about. A smile of 'you got me'.

"Do you really think you should be watching those?" Wilson prodded the bear, waiting for the eventual mauling. 

Steve looked down, took his crooked smile with him. "Watching Peg talk about all the hoops she went through, all the Captain Americas she had die on her? I guess I wasn't as special as I thought...Would you do something like that? Agree to be someone's handler without their knowing? Follow them around on secret missions to do additional secret missions behind their back?"

"You looking at me a little different these days?" Wilson smirked, shaking his head. "You're right, it is a little convenient. I allow you to pass me on my runs, trick you into coming to where I work, fool you into crashing at my house when you're an outlaw, and then bamboozled you further into having me help you---all so I can keep the charade going. I am a master of reverse psychology. You're right, I've been reporting directly to the president."

"She makes it a pretty argument," Steve sighed, turning back toward the image before pressing the power button and shutting away Peggy's image. 

"I imagine she made a pretty everything." Wilson gave a sweet smile. Gentle, genuine, what Peggy said Steve lacked in personality. Steve met that smile and immediately cast his eyes back down. He never discussed that part of himself, not with anyone. In part because he didn't think it was a good look; not one that sold war bonds at least.

Wilson seemed to sense the change in tides and pressured, "You thinking Bucky did it? Like what Peggy is saying in those videos?"

"Why wouldn't I think that?" Steve walked passed him out of the debriefing room. He rubbed his shoulder, still sore from the car he'd been thrown into. And through. 

Wilson followed, "I don't know...not wanting to? Some healthy denial?"

Steve grumbled, "It seems perfectly reasonable to me. Bucky Barnes, the one I knew, he would have done anything to save me. Not almost anything; anything. If there was a covert mission available to help me stay out of trouble, he'd have taken it hands down. Frighteningly few questions asked."

Steve glanced over his shoulder, "There's also a video of him suited up, reporting out. Kind stabs denying it in the heart."

They passed into the hall between booking rooms. Steve found himself glancing into the windows of each door, seeing the others sitting in their own debriefings. Steve glanced over each face, each situation, wishing they could just go home.

Seeing Stark in a debriefing room, laughing, joking with his CIA escorts, Steve's blood ran cold. There was a finesse to his movements, a tone and melody to his voice that could be heard through plaster and glass. He was like Howard, Steve thought, who could talk you into eating your own bullet because he didn't like your face. 

The news reels missed it, but Stark was mean. Howard was, at least. Steve looked at Tony and saw it all over again. The over-confidence, the personable act. The opposite end of the American Dream, the shift in the county from immigrant children to the capitalist boom. People who denied their history and flashed their bank accounts and didn't remember--if they ever thought of--being the little guy. 

Steve found himself sighing, a roll moving through his body like a wave of anguish. Okay, maybe it was a groan.

He turned from the room and looked back at Wilson. Sam had been standing there, gave a smile, "You making heart eyes at Iron Man?"

Steve grunted, spraining his neck to roll his eyes.

"Tony's the kind of guy I would have wanted to fight 80 years ago," Steve dropped into a chair at the conference table. He took a breath, looked around the conference hall, at the debriefing rooms-- let's be honest, holding cells. Since the SHIELD civil war they had been getting pulled into these CIA traps every time an Avenger sneezed.

If he was Tony he would have made some joke, would have discussed that at least there was a decent cedar finish to the table before plopping his boots on it.

"Looks like he might be the kinda guy you'd want to fight now. It wouldn't be a fair fight, you know." Wilson chuckled, pulling up his own chair. "Nerdy science guys like him get to be where they are because they trick the bully. You go after him, and you're just another big strong guy with a grudge."

Steve laughed to himself and looked down, "Yeah, maybe."

Wilson pulled the chair in further, leaning over the table. He gave Steve a concerned look, drawing his hands together. "Are you going to be all right?"

"I'm fine," Steve deflected.

"You're handling this unusually well, which makes me think you're not handling it at all."

Steve shot a look which Wilson responded to by raising his hands in a gesture of peace, "I run support groups. I can tell people to turn off the nightmares, but I can't tell myself turn off the therapy. Double standards, man."

"Which thing am I not handling?" Steve retorted. "The robots Stark made that nearly took out creation?"

"You were missing for a week," Wilson countered. "Everyone thought you had died. ...they were mourning for you, because Steve Rogers isn't the sort of person to just disappear. And then you pop back up, the day is saved, fanfare, and you won't talk to anyone about where you were. No one knows what's going on with you. We just faced some _shit_ and you're back to kissing babies and making apple pies. Meanwhile some terrorist organization--"

Steve cursed under his breath.

"--gets a hold of all of these old SHIELD reels and is posting them online calling you a pawn. And now you're looking at Tony like he's some piece of meat because he might have gotten a little loud at you about it."

"Might have gotten a little loud at me?" Steve didn't remember crossing his arms or turning the chair.

"Fair," Wilson put his hands up higher. He nodded, "Okay, fair. He was very loud."

"He asked me how my vacation was," Steve spoke slowly, deliberately. He felt his jaw clench as Wilson's attempt at a reassuring smile faded. "He asked how I enjoyed the apartment he gave me. He felt the need to remind me, repeatedly, that I rely on him. That I have no one without SHIELD.--"

"I'm sure he didn't mean it like, ...look, he was upset."

"All before throwing it in my face," Steve raised his eyebrows. "That I am supposed to be the 'leader'. An honorary Captain who never worked up the ladder. That I am a figure head, an image. A trademark of the US government. I am not a person to Tony Stark.--"

"He was a lot upset?"

"--And no amount of abandoning the things or people or fucking time period I belong with makes up for not sucking it up and doing my job." Steve grunted.

Wilson sighed, fidgeted in his chair, let it swing side to side, hitting his knees into the conference table. He scratched the back of his head and mumbled, "So, there's...tension."

"The only reason Howard ever liked me was because my existence stroked his ego." Steve snapped. He did not remember standing up. "If I could have been put in a box and labeled, I'd still be in a vault under Manhattan."

"Easy, Cap." Wilson put his hands back up. Steve froze and grumbled something to himself. He looked down at the table, feeling the fist he was making at his side.

One, two, three, exhale, "Look," Steve mumbled. "I don't have time to deal with my problems, there's too many things, too many monsters that go bump in the night. If I ever stop fighting them, all of the undealt with nonsense will come down on my head. I get that. There's no retirement plan for Captain America.... And yes, maybe...that isn't what Tony said exactly, but..."

Wilson pushed his chair back and stood up. He forced his hands into pockets, meeting Steve's gaze with a calm honesty. "All I can say is, if _I_ was your handler, I sure as hell would want you to be the last person to find out."

Steve laughed and looked down, "Actually, I was think it was Romanov."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya, thanks for reading :)  
> This is part of a series! You can find part 1 here: [Muscle Memory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3549494)  
> Also, for updates, fan art, weird comics I inappropriately laugh at out loud, and a multitude of reaction gifs which perfectly illustrate all of my emotions, take a look at this: [tumblr](http://asolitarygrape.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

The soldier had migrated back onto the bed, the metal box pulled up with him. Three sketchbooks fanned out around him while the soldier carefully unfolded every letter. The pages were frayed, sometimes purposely so -- that way Bucky could write over it with fresh ink and reuse it. It had been soaked in beer or spit and dried, looking more like papyrus than paper. Sometimes they were old command orders, sometimes ripped pages out of a sketch book. One was written over a note in German about the price of spaetzle and beer for American soldiers being different than for natives.

None of the letters had been postmarked, very few of them with envelopes, all of them exchanged by hand while the boys were overseas. The soldier couldn't imagine they would just hand them to one another; it seemed out of character. They would have been foundlings. Hidden in cots, under supplies, in each other's boots. 

Each one had a large number scrawled into the top right corner. The soldier had taken seconds in scanning the letters to find he only had even numbers. Some numbers had gone missing, possibly written over.

The soldier wanted to sniff the paper, lick it, possibly eat it if it meant remembering what the hell Bucky had been talking about. An anxious lump was growing in his chest as he looked into black ink until it stopped having shape and became meaningless blobs. He counted back from ten, took a breath.

_After your ma died. That night when you called me over. First time I'd seen you cry since the time you magically broke your own nose. What was that, 3 yrs apart? Then. Didn't know what to say, how to say it. First time ever, right? Just couldn't figure it out. What was I supposed to do, leave you alone? I'd never do that._  
_Been thinking about ~~back when you said that we~~ what you asked. I said no, but what I meant to say was I don't think they'd let us. I mean, I guess they couldn't stop us, but, you know, I didn't think ~~we~~ I could. I said no, and I'm sorry. ~~Cause I really didn't...I mean~~ , Cause I think about it. I think about it and I wonder what woulda been different, you know? Would it really have changed anything? I mean, yeah, a lot, but still, no. _  
_Ugh. You're the brain, you figure it out.___

__The soldier read this with enough of a skeptical look he thought he could hear someone's mother mumbling 'Your face is gonna freeze that way'. You're the brain? You figure it out? Fuck you, Bucky._ _

___It's just complicated, I guess. You always say I'm better with words but it's like my tongue dries up on me every time I try to put it out there. Sometimes it's not what you say, but what you can't. I feel so helpless, like I'm trapped in a box and I wanted to beat my way out of it and scream until my throat bleeds, but I don't, because coughing up blood won't make the words come out any better.__ _

__The soldier looked this over three times. He didn't feel anything, and it seemed odd, because if anything should elicit one of those new emotions, it should have been that._ _

__He couldn't even muster pity. Guilt rose up his throat, because he should be feeling _something_ , he reasoned. He felt something when he looked in the sketch books at Steve's drawings, but not a thing for Bucky Barnes._ _

__His stomach made a noise at him, which he barely understood. His brain whirled around and landed on: Food. Simple thought, survival based, tolerable. The soldier could do with something simple, which Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers certainly were not._ _

__The soldier edged himself off of the bed spread gingerly; some portion of his brain felt that disturbing the sketchbooks would be worse than disturbing a sleeping child. He tiptoed around the room like cat._ _

__Appropriate or not, overkill or not, the soldier went so far as to consider slithering on his belly. Anxiety rushing from his stomach like acid. To think all of his skills and programming as a trained assassin had amounted to peeping in someone's diary._ _

__He knew Steve wasn't going to come barging in the door at any moment, but it still felt like bad luck to be looking through his things._ _

__The main room, in which the soldier had spent a fraction of seconds before, was less spartan than Steve's bedroom. It had all the accoutrement Stark would have deemed a bare minimum, which was still lavish by most accounts._ _

__Stark wouldn't have expected the soldier or Steve to know the floors were Brazilian maple, for instance, and that Steve's choice of a black-lacquered red-oak dresser was quite odd. Stark, perhaps through Jarvis, would have recommended a Tasmanian Oak or Wenge if you wanted to go for a dark wood look. Then again, Stark might have appreciated the dresser for it's time period. Might have even let it be paired with the dark wicker chests that flanked the antique-white couch in the living room._ _

__The soldier stared at this couch, which he would not have known was a tuxedo sofa, nor would he have cared, and dreaded the concept of white furniture. What happens when you bleed on it?_ _

__The soldier cased his perimeter briefly, appreciated that the-Steve-he-thought-he-knew would have argued against anything deluxe and how many lamps do you really need to own? Like one, right? Why were there four in this room? Why did none of them match? Stark had the room painted a ghoulish mustard yellow. The soldier assumed that Steve tolerated this because it hadn't been fixed. It made the soldier think of vomit._ _

__The room itself was very open, and directly by the entry door was a kitchenette. Wide, antique-white overhanging cabinet doors that reminded the soldier of a space shuttle. They lay flush to the wall and ceiling. Beneath them, a refrigerator, a plain cream-colored counter top, a sink. The soldier scrutinized this. Opening the refrigerator he cocked his head to the side._ _

__What does a strapping super soldier on the go keep stocked in his pantry? Why, beer. Protein shakes, coffee flavored ones. Cheese and apples and pears and a very sad looking cucumber that really ought to have been thrown out. The soldier nearly put his head into the refrigerator, irritable, trying to find where the food was hidden. Eggs, some tortillas that had never been opened, a brick of cheese. The soldier began tossing things over his shoulder as he griped. Peanut butter, Chinese take out that had probably expired several months ago, peppers, mushrooms--or maybe those had just started growing in here._ _

__Microwave popcorn. Why was he keeping this in the fridge? The soldier grumbled straightening his back. He scanned around the room again. No microwave. What fresh hell was this?_ _

__Muttering to himself, he grabbed the brick of cheese, a pear, and the peanut butter, stacking them up his metal arm. He looked at his pile of rotting food on the floor. Scanned around again. No garbage bin. Fine, no, that's cool. Steve can clean up when he gets home._ _

__Taking a comically large step over the pile of food he had left exposed to the elements on a very expensive floor, the soldier scurried back into the bedroom where the wall color, as well as the number of light fixtures, was less offensive._ _

__The soldier piled his supplies onto the bed methodically. He looked carefully at them, laying each side by side. He could probably live for four days on this. His brain worked to calculate each portion, each sliver he could cut and corner he could scrape. Yes, this would do nicely._ _

__The soldier stepped over his supplies, tiptoed around the sketchbooks, and settled himself like a kitten back onto the bedspread. He took a breath, looked at the piles on display around him. Those new goddamn emotions. He was so _contented._ It was disgusting._ _

__Count back from ten, deep breath, reality is here and now and there's nothing to worry about._ _

__Okay, the soldier thought. He reached to the remote and flicked the television back on. Four news stations later, he had failed to find any updates on the status of Captain America. Not even a peep of what was going on, only witness accounts and damage reports regarding the Ultron disaster. People thanking the Avengers, the government, various gods, but not Steve Rogers._ _

__No, that's okay. Count back from ten, deep breath, reality. The soldier clicked through channels until he found a nature documentary. "--to calculate the age of sheep from their front teeth, as a pair of milk teeth is replaced by--" The soldier turned down the sound until it was a dull thrum in the room. The voice over actor seemingly whispering incoherently, potentially sharing the greatest secrets of mankind._ _

__"Okay," the soldier said out loud. He took another long breath, calming, and lifted the next letter._ _

____Seems like there aren't any ideas in my head some days, but I can't fall asleep at night without telling myself some story to get the bad thoughts out. If I just keep focusing, put my head down and commit to one good thought, I'll fall asleep. Wouldn't even remember my own name. Just have my story.__  
_I'll eventually work up the nerve to tell you, but the best damn stories I've told myself have been the ones where you're the hero. Or maybe I'm the hero, and we just switch parts. But there's no story without you._  
_Not that I need you to fall asleep, jack ass._  
_Gettin real smug, Rogers. Better watch yourself._

__He exhaled and looked up at the television screen, wondering if the sheep could be of any help. The soldier turned up the volume, tilting his head to the side as a large shrubbery was trotted out. He blinked at the shrubbery until it began to waddle away, it's massive fleece breaking apart like the armored sections of an armdillo. The sheep sauntered along under a mass of wool._ _

__"--Say they have found a sheep that's apparently never been shorn. The sheep was found wandering an estate in Tasmania, believed to have hidden in caves and wandering the country side, and avoided being caught for six years."_ _

__The soldier huffed and cupped his hand to his jaw. The sheep continued moseying about it's business, being enormously burdened and seeming mildly disgruntled that it was being domesticated. He decided to change the channel because if he continued feeling this intense a bond with a sheep, he was going to need more therapy than he'd anticipated._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very quick chapter, it's building back up...  
> Thanks for reading :)
> 
> Kinda lost? check out part 1 [Muscle Memory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3549494)  
> Also, for fan art I like or random other things, here's a [tumblr](http://asolitarygrape.tumblr.com/)


	4. Chapter 4

“Steve?” Bucky called out.

Steve kept staring up at the sky, nesting his head back on his arm and thinking it seemed too damn blue. Who’da ever thought to make something that blue? Steve drew a breath and exhaled until Bucky was obscuring the light, standing next to him like a big black rain cloud.

“Steve,” Bucky prodded him with his foot and Steve twisted his face into a frown and looked up the length of that sucker thinking ‘Why you gotta mess with me so much?’ But he didn’t say it, looming as it was behind his teeth. Bucky pressed, “Come on, your ma is gonna kill me if she finds out I let ya come down here.”

Steve really screwed his face up at this, a real unattractive knot, “Whatdya mean? We’re not doing nothing bad.”

Bucky threw his shoulders back in indignation, “You takin advantage, Rogers. She being at work, and you’re supposed to stay on the block. Just because I don’t hafta, doesn’t mean I’m getting you in trouble for coming out to the shore.”

Steve raised his eyebrows but closed his eyes, leaning back into the sand and giving a soft, editorial tone, “You won’t get in trouble is right. I can make my own decisions.”

Bucky might have gone to say something, might have protested, might have even considered kicking Steve in the ribs, but instead he slumped down onto the sandy grass and looked over the bar toward the shoreline. He harrumphed, loudly, with emphasis, but Steve didn’t budge.

“It’s too hot out anyway,” Bucky posited, tilted his head like he did. Steve didn’t give him the courtesy of a thought. Bucky kept pressing, “Smells like sweat out here. And salt. And there’s prolly a couple homeless hop heads around here. Lying around in the sand like they’s something special about this place.

“They probably all meet down on the beach,” Bucky nodded thoughtfully. “Taking about nabbing kids or raping women. Got pet rats the size of dogs. And snakes. And every Tuesday they all go out for--,”

“I like it here,” Steve snapped.

Bucky smiled to himself but didn’t acknowledge, “They all go out to Coney Island and steal purses. And pick pocket and eat outta garbage cans.”

“It’s nice here,” Steve countered. “It’s bright out, and warm, and…and you’re not gonna mess that up.”

Bucky considered this, watching the murky water. He wondered which parts people found enticing, the garbage floating in the bay? He glanced over at Steve, stole a look at him, what with Steve being so coy about everything. Bucky’d been getting taller, been getting broader, been acting funny, but he kept looking at Steve like he was the one changing. Steve sneered at him, “What?”

“Nothing,” Bucky looked back out at the shoreline. “Just thinking about how the gulls are circling. I think they might take you for a corpse.”

“Fuck you,” Steve grumbled, throwing a hand full of sand in Bucky’s face. Bucky sputtered and coughed, leaning away and rubbing at his eyes.

Steve decided he was being over dramatic.

Bucky swung back around with a handful of mud and dropped it on Steve’s head.

Bucky decided Steve was being over dramatic. Steve coughed and rolled onto his side, wiping muck off of his neck and chest and cursing. “Now she _is_ gonna kill you.”

“I was in my rights,” Bucky held his head up high.

Steve pounced on him, smacking mud into his face and dragging it over his mouth. Bucky thrashed to kick him off while Steve laughed, “What? You can’t handle _me_? Thought you were supposed to be strong, Barnes.”

Bucky stopped moving and, as if to prove a point, glared up and spit in Steve’s face.

There was something purely instinctual in Steve seeing red. One moment it had been a joke, albeit not a very nice joke, and the next Steve slammed a bony fist in Bucky’s jaw. Bucky’s head turned, but mostly out of surprise. He stared at the world to his right and when he looked back up, faint pink mark on his cheek, Steve panicked. He had a small handful of options. He decided, best as he could, to play it off as if they were still joking. Steve couldn’t throw a punch anyway, right? Not one that would knock Bucky Barnes on his ass.

“What?” Steve wondered if he was trying too hard, worried about the warble in his voice, “You can’t get me offa you?”

Bucky didn’t move. Didn’t change his facial expression. Didn’t even blink. He looked up at Steve with a mix of anger and confusion, like his head was spinning. Steve tried to take stock of it. He was pinning Bucky down, laughable as that was, or at least he was on top of him. At least looming over him, knees planted on either side of him. Bucky could just push him over—a strong wind could just push him over. The lack of response made Steve feel cold in his bones. The glare made him withdraw.

“What?” Steve snapped at him, some of his worry mixing into fear and anger—yeah anger, anger’s good. He could be angry. “What’dyou expect?”

Something seemed to crack, Bucky’s expression shifted. He looked surprised, maybe confused about where he was. He blinked, he shook. “What? Nothing. Get off.”

Steve screwed up a tight lip and stood up, leaving Bucky the space to move to his feet. Steve looked down, feeling embarrassed but not sure why. He knew he’d done something wrong, he just couldn’t figure which thing had been the last one. The worst one. Steve stepped aside while Bucky brushed himself off and muttered, “Let’s go home.”

“Hold on, you got,” Steve took a step in, brushing mud off Bucky’s chin. The other froze stock still, as if he’d been slapped. Steve brushed his fingers thoughtlessly past his jaw and got quiet, feeling the other’s pulse hammering.

Steve stepped back, “You okay?”

“M’fine!” Bucky snapped, stalking off. “Come on, you need to get cleaned up before Sarah gets home.”

"Steve?" Natasha prodded. Steve bit his lip and slowly opened his eyes, his hand still tucked up under his jaw, thumb on a pressure point. A small tremor somewhere in his finger tips, which he slowly recognized as the precursor to tingling. He blinked sleepily at her, taking about forty seconds to register he was still sitting at the conference table.

He straightened himself out, popped his shoulder blades in the process, the tingling sensation burning into wakefulness as blood rushed into his hand. He ran his still living hand over his face and grunted, "Sorry, sorry. I was listening."

"Sure you were," Her mouth pursed. Her head dipped to the side sending a mane of red rolls with it, crashing over each other like waves, and Steve smiled that she was curling her hair again. There was something about pincurls he would always be drawn to.

"How you feeling?" He prompted and Natasha gave a pressured sigh, rolling her eyes coldly around the room, finding separate things to focus on as her lips tightened into a meek appraisal.

"M'all right." She concluded, dusting off the front of her tee. "A little worried that our fearless leader slept through the power point presentation of just how much destruction we're worth to the United Stated government."

Steve brought his chair to rest on all legs and looked around the vacant conference table, "Where'd Sam go?"

"He ran down with Clint and Rhodey to look over the armor redesigns that Tony worked up based on the Ultron disassembly." Natasha pulled herself up onto the conference table, sitting back on her hands. She kicked her feet. "And the green guy and Thor are down working the press junket. Brain and brawn sort of approach to marketing the Avengers back to America after we, ya know, exploded the place."

"Who's that leave?" Steve narrowed his eyes, but felt light. Somewhat cheery.

"Welp, Cap, that leaves me, and you, and the Twins," She dipped her head back and forth, "But honestly, I think they're pretty into each other, kind of in a weird way, so I don't necessarily want to invite them on a drink run."

"Wow," Steve tipped his chair back again, cocking his head to the side, "I didn't realize we'd gotten that sexist. Send the chick down for coffee. You gonna start taking dictation?"

She gave him a smug grin, "You think so? Because I think that face of SHIELD during the heart of the Project Insight appeals, and the SHIELD civil war, gets to walk out in her civvies while the heroes of Washington have to kiss babies and talk shop. Plus, 

I can make Captain America buy me lunch."

She leant into his space and smiled, smelling like big red gum and vanilla lotion, "And I call that a win for ovaries everywhere."

Steve grinned, "You're an asshole."

"You blush easy," She perked up, bouncing onto her feet and turning on her heels. 

"And I never said I was bringing back any coffee. Now who's sexist?"

Steve shoved onto his feet and stretched his shoulders, happy to be out of uniform.

"Normally when old people say something ignorant there's a cute, 'it's just their way' sort of comment and shrug. You hold me to a different standard cause I'm pretty."

"You want me to start making those?" She raised her eyebrows. "I could _really_ embarrass you in public, I bet."

Steve found a way to worm his hands into his pockets and shrug, ambling behind with his head down. "At this point in my life, I don't really care enough."

Natasha frowned and led him out of the conference room, "And that's why we can't have nice things."

The coffee shop was twelve blocks from the concrete slab the CIA called an office building, or rather didn't call an office building, because _spies_. Steve was impressed by their exit but also expected Natasha to easily maneuver their way out of the building, also because _spies_.

Head down, walking through the streets, Steve found himself drawing a slow breath here and there to admire the fact that the city kept ticking. Just like New York had kept the trains running. He admired that people kept moving forward, that the world could end but in America we still need to drink coffee and go to work and return to normalcy. He appreciated that the mentality had never run out of style.

"Do you agree?" Steve played a very one sided version of 'guess what I'm thinking'.

Natasha hated that game, "Sure. Why not."

"'America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy' and so on." Steve mumbled.

"Oh," Natasha glanced over her shoulder at him. "I thought you were asking me not to make fun of your bitch coffee."

"Just because anything short of whiskey is a bitch drink to you," Steve hummed as they stopped at an intersection and waited for the light.

"Anything short of whiskey _is_ a bitch drink," Natash agreed, "Including water."

"Okay," Steve grinned, "I'll go drink for drink with you."

" _Cheater_ " Natasha grinned before stepping into the roadway.

Standing in line Steve sighed and scanned the room, wondering how many times he’d been herded into a room and debriefed in his life—it had to be a disgusting number, he reasoned, if standing in line to get coffee felt like a relief. The room was cramped, open and broad yet full of people venting into smart phones and chattering to each other intimate conversations over small tables, each sound overlapping another.

Natsha nudged him, realizing his focus was currently on a young girl complaining about needing to find a new sushi place after an Ultron drone had destroyed her favorite restaurant, and why couldn’t the Avengers have aimed it somewhere else?

“She your type?”

“No,” Steve worried he’d answered too quickly.

Natasha gave him a smile, “Then stop staring, you’re going to get us on twitter.”

Steve consented with a shrug and looked up at the menu, his head in a cloud, “Do you think we keep moving forward, after something bad happens, because we’re determined to fight, or because we’re just selfish and don’t want anything to change.”

Natasha screwed up her face, squinting at the chalkboard stylized menu overhead. “Little of column a, little of column b, Professor.”

“Professor?” Steve harrumphed, while contemplating what in the good hell a ‘London Fog’ was or why it would cost four dollars.

“Quoting Warren G Harding at me,” She retorted. “Staring at young people complaining and debating humanity. You having an existential crisis, grandpa?”

“Something like that,” Steve mumbled and shuffled forward in line.

He ordered a London Fog, because he wanted to know what it was and—despite at one time in his life thinking that ten cents was too expensive for a drink, he supposed ‘inflation’ and ‘Ultron’ were excuse enough to try something new. Natasha, accordingly, called him a woman and ordered a black coffee.

She nudged her head at him until he followed her to a seat by a picture window. The two of them glancing around at the smoke rising from the horizon, while the rest of Washington marched on indifferently. Natasha prodded, “Next time you can get limeaid. I hear they put frozen strawberries in it so as you drink it it changes flavors.”

“Shut up,” Steve grunted, poking at the London Fog. It certainly was an interesting color, and also not coffee. Tasted all right, kept his hands warm, he reasoned.

Natasha eyed him, while he stared down and raised an eyebrow. Not drawing his attention, a little jilted for it since she rarely had a problem drawing men’s consideration, she sighed loudly, “You gonna ask me?”

“I was waiting for you to ask.” He gave a polite smile and tipped his drink at her.

“Yes,” She beamed. “I run secret missions behind your back. You knew that. But rarely, if ever, were they about you. And I don’t fit in your suit.”

Steve rolled his eyes, “I missed a lot when I fell asleep?”

“Enough,” She scrunched up her face, which Steve found infinitely more endearing. She elaborated, “Wilson told me you were sitting in there watching those videos. I thought I plugged everything into the internet already. Doesn’t surprise me there’s more stuff that isn’t backed up where a computer could get to it.”

“Computers can get to anything these days.” Steve tipped back his chair and Natasha kicked him underneath it until all four legs were on the floor.

He frowned at her, she grunted, “Captain America does not break his skull on my watch.”

“If the worst thing that happens to me today is that I fall out of my chair, I’d be happy with that.” Steve added, giving a crooked smile, “Besides. There are very few things that can break my skull.”

Natasha’s face dropped and she looked at her coffee.

“You trying to feign concern for me?” Steve grunted.

“Not feign.” She shrugged. “Exaggerate? I’m not the biggest on emotions.”

Steve nodded at this and tipped his head toward the plate glass windows. “You want to walk and talk?”

“No,” Natasha sighed, “It’d be more conspicuous. It’s loud in here, and we don’t know for a fact that we’re bugged in here, we can just assume it. I could use a little healthy paranoia over the outright big brother shtick.”

Steve shrugged and blinked, eyes scanning around the room lightly. “Go ahead.”

“You should be dead,” Natasha mumbled.

Steve barked a laugh, “Understatement.”

“I thought you were dead.” She nudged, trying to draw out an emotion. “It _isn’t_ like you to go missing. Not unless you’re buried alive and we just don’t know it. You were a stain on a sidewalk, and no one could find the stain. Which freaked us out more. You seen Cape Fear yet?”

“Nope.”

“Do it, list.” She pointed at his pockets, but Steve didn’t reach for a notebook, just smiled back. She swallowed, “You’re the last person I expect to pop out of the water like Jason Voorhees during the final act.”

“I’m assuming that’s a compliment.”

“Sure,” She flashed a smile, then eyes snapped back to her coffee. “I know you’re mad at Tony, things between you have been weird, but he was really worried. He wanted to send out some tech just to scan for you. And we couldn’t afford it, with everything going on. But he tried anyway, and,” shrug.

Steve looked at his drink, still not sure what it was classified as. There was milk and honey involved, maybe earl grey tea? He didn’t have much of a head for tea, he knew black and not black.

“Steve,” Natasha’s voice was blunt. He looked back up. She frowned, “You need to talk to him, don’t just fester on this one. You hurt him.”

Steve’s eyebrows flew up at this,” Oh. Did I?”

“You’re kinda acting like a kicked puppy.” She retorted. “And so is he. And if you plan on barking at each other, I will spay and or neuter you both.”

“Anything else, mother?” Steve grumbled, draining his cup.

She leant back in her chair and studied him, “Don’t suppose you’ll tell me where you were?”

“You’re my secret government handler, why should I tell you what happens when I’m off the grid?” Steve cocked an eyebrow but smiled despite himself. He added, “It’s complicated.”

Natasha pushed back her chair, shrugging her shoulders by her ears and giving a sincere look of ‘Eh, I tried’. She added, sleepily, “You do what you want, Rogers. I’m not that invested in…anything. But if you need help, I’m not doing it unless you say please.”

“And saying please would entail?” Steve leant in, elbows on the table.

“Foot rub,” She nodded, squinting her eyes in deep thought. “Secret missile codes. Pledging me the soul of your first born. Admitting what’s going on with you so that I can coax Tony into apologizing for losing his head at you.”

“I could do foot rub.” Steve offered.

“Uh,” Natasha closed her eyes dramatically, “ _Ovaries._ ”

Steve leant away from the table, “Fuck you.”

She flashed a dazzling grin, her eyes crinkling, “What do you need right now?”

“Shower,” He tipped his head side to side, “Sleep, probably. Not being in Washington.”

“Okay,” She conceded, “We stand up, you walk one way and I walk the other and I’ll see you in New York.”

“Really?” Steve cocked his head to the side.

She raised her eyebrows, “You’re not getting out of the foot rub.”

Steve glowed and glanced down, “One of these days we're gonna go to prison together.”

Natasha nodded slowly, “That is very likely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading :)
> 
> Part 1: [Muscle Memory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3549494)
> 
> For future updates, fan art I like, silly gifs, take a look here: [tumblr](http://asolitarygrape.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some trigger warnings: asthma/ panic attack, childhood abuse

He grumbled as the lock clicked into place and JARVIS' voice flitted nearby to inform Steve he had a visitor. He couldn't handle people right now, he wasn't sure he'd want to handle people ever again. He'd ignore it, maybe they'd go away.

Stepping into the living room he was smacked with a horrid smell of rotting food and nearly leapt back out into the hall. Coughing, his face turned away from his apartment, he covered his mouth. Did the fridge stop working? Didn't Tony have some sort of way of telling if the Tower lost power?

_Great,_ he sighed. _Another thing I might have to go to Tony for..._

Steve trudged forward, head down, thinking that when he had faced Nazis or Hydra or aliens he always busted in, head held high, chest forward, ready for anything. He couldn't figure how much he attributed to smell and how much he attributed to Tony Stark making him feel like a child. He wasn't going to be busting in anything today...

He shut the door behind him and immediately went to the windows, bounding across the room in a few long strides. He parted the curtains. He'd broken the window in his last apartment when something like this had happened. A dead mouse or something while he'd been away. He figured super soldier must have meant super smeller, yet another thing no one had warned him about when he'd hopped into the VitaRay chamber.

Before, he'd gotten too eager, thrown the windows open and ripped them out of the wall in the process. Had to pay for the downstairs neighbor's car to be fixed when a sheath of glass and wood came crashing out of the building it was parked adjacent too.

Gingerly, breathing slowly through his mouth while he did it, Steve edged up the window. It made a confident thunk into place and Steve exhaled, grateful not to discover the damage that tossing glass from twelve stories up in New York City would cause.

He turned back to the room ahead of him, wondering where the candles had gotten to. He couldn't remember who it was. Maybe Natasha, maybe one of the SHIELD psychiatrists they had had him see after he thawed. Smell is the sense closest tied to memory, they said. It seems silly, but it can affect your mood the quickest, they said. They had him write down things he missed about Brooklyn, things they thought he could use as distractions, to cope.

But they don't make candles that smell like piers, or grease, or night sweats. Steve had nearly turned purple when he'd been asked what smells would remind him of home. He settled on baking. Sarah's molasses cookies. Or black coffee and sugar. Or cucumbers and celery that Steve used to get for free from the grocery store. He couldn't count how many times he'd been handed a brown bag of something leafy and nearing it's expiration and been told to bring it to his mother.

The candles he had smelled like soap and lotion. One was vaguely cucumber smelling, which was what had encouraged the gift. But this was a fresh cucumber smell, not something nearing the 'eh, give this to the poor kid' smell.

He grabbed candles from one of the wicker caskets and slammed them onto the coffee table. He ruffled through the side table again until he pulled out a book of matches from the same stash of candles, and plunged the room into a vanilla-coconut haze.

Steve moved toward the kitchen and tilted his head at the pile of food rotting in front of his refrigerator. Steve frowned. 

Piled on the floor of the kitchenette was old chinese food containers, rotting apples and pears, a sorry cucumber that looked like it had been through hell. Steve's frown deepened. That cucumber was still good.

He slowly walked forward, and dipped his head around the doorway of the bedroom. There was a faint noise, like the television left on. Looking to the floor, Steve walked past the doorway, determined. He pulled an old wad of plastic bags from under his sink, piled the rotting food into one, and opened the garbage shoot in his closet, stuffing the whole mess down. 

He was thinking quickly, fifty one different versions of what he should do next appearing and disappearing in his cerebrum. If nothing else, eventually the open window and the candle would do its job out here. Steve imagined there was a different job waiting in his bedroom. 

Steve tip toed in, trying to be his most quiet, to pull within himself and disappear. Dipping his head in first, he found the soldier was laid out across his bed, a metal arm thrown over his face. Steve paused, loosened his muscles as something warm seemed to curl in his chest. And then the second sight hit him. The papers strewn over the bed; the sketchbooks, the open red metal lock box. The curling warmth clenched into a fist that closed out logic.

No, no, no, no, no, he coached himself. One, two, three, breathe. He swallowed down the bile quickly accumulating under his adam’s apple and took a full step into the room. 

He tried to take in the whole sight, tried to revive the warm curly thing that was being strangled in a death grip.

It was fine, it would be fine, that was _Bucky_. Still, the panic started to rise up Steve’s neck from under his collar. The room became hot. His head spun around. Bucky, he reminded. Bucky, who’d leave messes for him to clean up and fall asleep as soon as he was comfortable and who’d wait in the only safe place he knew, wait indefinitely for Steve to come back.

Steve lowered himself onto the floor, backing into the doorjamb. He wasn’t sure why, he just needed to feel the room he was in, needed to recover. He’d been fine a second ago, he angrily insisted. The room was hot and he was making fists and he just needed things put back in their place. He’d just pick it all up and put it away, and then he’d be fine. ...Except he’d still know someone had touched it. Steve pushed his back flushed to the wall, shoulder blades in contact with cold semigloss. He closed his eyes. It was Bucky, though. That should make a difference.

He wasn’t sure what to do next. This hadn’t happened before. People usually stayed out of his business. But Bucky wouldn’t have, Bucky would have been pulled—like the planet on a string, whipping through the cosmos. Bucky would have probably dissected the whole room, piece by piece. And then he would have looked up from his reading once Steve had caught him and given a shit eating grin and said, ‘Rogers, you got a crush or something?’

And his face would have burned. Steve would have shrank so deep down into himself his soul would be down somewhere by his knees, and his heart would have jumped out, and he would have started arguing. Started tearing things out of Bucky’s hands and cramming it back into the lock box and cursing at Bucky the whole time. And that asshole would have laughed. Bucky would have grabbed him by the ear or the collar and joked with him, tried to make him realize how angry he was for nothing.

And Steve wouldn’t have been consoled. He would have been bitter. And Bucky would keep prodding him, realizing he’d stepped over a line. And Bucky would get more and more gentle, and talk in that real quiet way like when he didn’t want to say the wrong thing. He’d pull himself around Steve, because he was bigger than Steve, and he could stretch himself into more positions, and he would comfort Steve no matter how much he struggled to get away from it.

But he wouldn’t apologize, Steve thought. Definitely not.

Steve opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling above him before a few deep breaths gave him enough confidence to get back on his feet. He tiptoed to the bed, gathered up the letters--all save for the one in the soldier’s hand, scrunched into a fist against his chest.

He neatly folded them, replaced them into the lock box, replaced the lock box (and strewn clothing) into his drawer, and pushed it shut. There was a soft scraping noise, one which Steve flinched at. He looked over his shoulder and saw the figure still asleep. Walking around the bed, he slowly weaseled the letter out of the soldier’s hand.

The soldier grumbled and rolled over, away from Steve, curling in on himself like a child. Steve wondered when the last time was he had seen a bed? When he had last felt safe enough to sleep in a room with noises? How much had he already worked through on his own, in the past year, in order to be able to approach Steve now? How many times had he tried?

Steve uncrumpled the letter and took a breath, looking over familiar handwriting.

_Why would I ever think that? Christ, I wish ~~I could just say~~ it was different. That’s all I meant. My heart hurts. You deserve so much. I’ll never be happy with what you have. Don’t ever feel like what you have is enough. Cause you’re wrong, Rogers. You’re too damn nice. You’re too damn nice and it kills me. I wish I could break your nose again, you’re too damn nice. I get so for-real-fucked-up mad at you when you talk like that._  
 _I’m no body, Stevie. I’m a punch line to a joke no one laughs at. I wish I’d said yes. Cause then we wouldn’t be here. And yes, it’s all my fault. Stalin and Hitler and the sunrise, too. I am god. Shut up, Rogers. I know, I know._

Steve exhaled and folded the letter carefully, sliding it onto the nightstand. A storm seemed to be building inside of him, but there isn’t much you can do to stop thunder.

"Steve, if you'd just listen," Bucky was arguing, hands splayed in front of him. But Steve was hot, and Steve was pacing around his bedroom, and no amount of smooth talking from Bucky Barnes was going to do shit.

"You think I don't get it?!" Steve snapped. He was angry at Bucky all the time; angry for years, it felt like. Ever since Bucky had gotten too tall for them to fit in the same hiding spaces, ever since Bucky had started getting attention from the girls at school. Every time he saw Bucky a feeling wormed itself into his chest that he would never be his equal, they would never be the same. No amount of friendly words or shared promises would ever make Steve Rogers able to be helpful to Bucky Barnes. No, Bucky would just go on looking after Steve because Steve was helpless. And with every proposed double date, every sympathetic look or calm encouragement, Steve Rogers wanted to knock Bucky's head off.

Bucky sat on the bed, his head bent so as to avoid the sloped ceiling--Steve didn't have to bend his head, Steve fumed. Bucky stared at his shoes, his slumped shoulders rising and falling and Steve hated that he traced his outline. "Steve," His voice was much deeper now, Steve's still cracked. Steve hated it. "Steve, you need to just....cut it out, okay? I'm trying to say somethin'."

Steve rounded the corners like a caged tiger, just a little insane from the circus. He wouldn't slow down, if anything he walked faster. And if Bucky dared-- _if he dared_ \--suggest Steve would have an asthma attack, Steve would rain sulfur and brimstone down on him.

Bucky got in that quiet way he would get when he knew not to press the situation. Cause normally when he opened his mouth he'd find a joke there, and he knew that wouldn't fix things. Instead he took a slow breath, "Steve, just sit down. We can talk."

"About what?" Steve snapped and rounded on him. "I said I didn't want to keep doing this but you--"

"It's for your own good."

"--never listen to me! It's like you think I'm a kid, like you're better than me--"

"You need to just calm down."

"--Supposed to just do whatever you say, course I am. I always do, like an idiot--"

"I need to tell you something."

"--we don't have the money for this. Just another goddamn scheme, like the time you--"

"I need you to listen."

"--where we supposed to get the money from, Buck? Pull it out of--"

"We need to go on this date." Bucky snapped, his voice raising. His eyes locked onto Steve and seemed darker than usual, like coal. Steve stood still, vibrating like a cartoon character smacked in the face. He wondered if he looked it.

"Why would we need to," Steve started in.

"Because my dad," Bucky's voice was still raised, his speech pressured, but he broke down and his voice dropped. He looked back at the floor. Steve leant onto one hip, nearly bent down to try and match Bucky's eyes. Bucky grumbled, "We need to go on a date, okay? I'll find the girls, we just,...people need to see us with girls, okay?"

Steve straightened and scrutinized the other, "What are you getting at?"

"I just need you to do this for me, all right?" Bucky snapped. He forced out a breath, hands making fists inside his pockets.

"What if I say no?" Steve snapped right back. "Jesus, Buck. I'm sick of you dragging me around like some sick kitten for sympathy. You think any of those girls are gonna look at me twice next to you? You think I even want them to?"

Bucky muttered. "Don't. Don't talk about yourself like that."

"Maybe when I'm older I'll give a shit, give me a chance to stop looking like a scare crow... You know what it does to me every time you drag me out there? It's like a goddamn flag pinned to my chest. It's embarrassing, Buck."

"Just do this for me, stop making such a big deal." Bucky was gritting his teeth.

Steve groaned and rolled his eyes, fixating on the window. He could feel Bucky look up, feel that helpless, pleading staring at his skin. He didn't need to look to know Bucky would be giving him a puppy-dog face, complete with simpering eyebrow raise. Some ingratiating wordplay building up on his tongue to talk Steve into it.

Bucky's eyes rolled over him enough times that Steve felt the skin begin to burn. He was turning pink, though he'd never admit it. And Bucky wasn't going to look away until Steve let him have his plea.

Steve turned back toward Bucky and dropped down on his knees, trying to beat the master of pleading looks. "Buck, don't make me do this."

Bucky responded like an automaton, "I just need us to be seen out with girls. You can talk to me the whole time. I...I won't let anyone look a wrong way at you. Somebody breathes a bad thought at you and I'll fight him. Just, please."

"We don't have any money," Steve groaned. "How are we supposed to take out some girls?"

Bucky's eyes lightened slightly, a small twitch as the comment registered. Steve was considering humoring him. Bucky's silver tongued twinkle started to turn up the volume, "I can figure that part out. It won't be a problem at all, buddy."

Steve frowned, a deep pang of anger shaking through him. "I didn't say yes, Buck."

"I need you to do this!" Bucky shouted. The color drained out of his face, which made Steve pull away. Bucky huffed, "You need to do it, Steve. This isn't a question. We are going out."

"Why don't I get a choice?" Steve argued. "You don't know what it's like! I feel like these dames are gonna step on me, I'm pretty sure they want to! I'm a bug, I'm scum, and people want to step over me and get away as fast as they can! Why do you have to parade me out and remind me of that every damn weekend? I know I'm shit! I know I'm...I'm broken. What do you get out of proving it?!"

Bucky's fist made contact with Steve's face before either had time to recognize the wind up and the pitch. Bucky threw his weight into it, too, which might have surprised Bucky more than Steve. In an attempt to stop himself, Bucky had tried a second too late to pull away and went crashing off of the bed, hitting the floor with a loud thwack. Steve's hands jumped to his face as he pulled in the opposite direction, and then both boys were on the floor. 

Steve curled his legs up under him, the sudden betrayal feeling more like a hit to the guts. His ears were ringing, and his eyes were pinched shut, but he was so confused he felt the reverberation more than he'd felt the initial impact. His hands still clamped over his nose, feeling blood gushing between his fingers, he gasped and panicked.

It had already started by the time he began to spit the blood creeping down the back of his throat. His chest ached as his airway began to squeeze shut and Steve began wheezing, trying to pull oxygen past muscles that had decided to close. He spit out blood between gasping, holding his hands to cipher the blood away from his mouth. He began to yell at himself, one, two, three, breathe. His shoulders and chest tensed as he tried inflating his lungs. His heart hammering against his ribs, he moaned into the gasps, tears building in the corners of his eyes as he squeezed them shut.

Bucky sat up, "I'm sorry, Steve. Shit. I'm sorry."

Steve curled into a ball, panting. Bucky's arms wound their way around him, pulling him back against Bucky's chest. The blonde thrashed but Bucky pinned him down and pressed his face against Steve's neck, "It's not asthma, Steve. You're okay. Just breathe."

Steve began to shake his head, gasping. Bucky insisted, "I'm good, but I ain't that good. It isn't asthma, you're just panicking. Come on, Steve. Doesn't have to go that far, just calm down."

The blonde thrashed again and whimpered, but Bucky weighed considerably more and he was pressing Steve down into the floor, folded around him. Bucky whispered, "It doesn't have to turn into an asthma attack, just calm down. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Steve, you know I'm sorry. Please. Please, I can't stop it if you really stop breathing, Steve."

He wasn't sure which thing helped. Steve's back pressed tight to Bucky's front, the darker pressing his face against Steve's boney throat, his breath coming out in hot, angry gasps. Steve leant back into him, worrying that he might have seemed too forward. Pressing into the other, trying to mimic his healthy body. Bucky's cheek pressed into Steve's skin, moving to his hair, begging, "Please, Steve. I'm so sorry. Please breathe."

Steve shuddered, the tears shaking loose as the world seemed to go slow and Bucky's lips dangerously close to his ear, "Please. I'm so sorry, Steve."

He swallowed hard, tasting acrid metal slide down with it. A few more uncertain gasps later and Steve grumbled, "What d'jou have to do tat for?"

Bucky's laugh burst out of him like a panicked breath and he pressed his face tight against Steve's hair, warm breath giving a dry sob into Steve's ear, "I'm so sorry."

"S'okay," Steve got used to the pattern, to breathing in and out, calming himself. 

Bucky clung onto him, his breath warming Steve's hair, the small tickle as it pushed his hair over his ear. For a long minute while Steve felt Bucky's arms tense and pull into him, he wondered if Bucky wanted to pull them into the same body. And Bucky shook and began to whimper and Steve patted his arm until the other relented. The blonde sat up, pinching his nose, blood still spilling down his front. Bucky stayed on the ground, staring vacantly at where Steve had been.

"I tink," Steve closed one eye while pinching his nose and looking down, "I need a towel."

"Yeah," Bucky mumbled and in a fluid motion he was back on his feet. He stepped out and back into the room in the blink of an eye, offering a moldy grey towel which Steve immediately pooled around his busted nose, trying to snap it into place. Bucky wouldn't meet his eyes, instead wiping up the blood on the floor.

"Buck?" Steve prodded. Still, the other kept his head down, mopping up the blood and disappearing back out of the room. Steve heard the bathroom faucet running, counted a few slow breaths, before stepping out into the hall and peering after Bucky.

"Buck?" Steve echoed himself, pressing open the bathroom door gently.

He was slumped over the faucet, his head down and water running over the back of his head and neck, trickling down between his shoulders enough to make damp veins through his shirt. His hands clenched around the edges of the porcelain tub, his shoulder blades still heaving. Steve wasn't certain since the water seemed to drown out the sound, but he thought Bucky was sobbing.

"Buck?" Steve tried to be gentle, but with his nose broken everything sounded slow and dumb. He swallowed thickly. Bucky didn't respond, his shirt sticking to him, water dripping onto the floor.

Steve adjusted the towel over his face and stepped past him, reaching over Bucky's head and turning the handle stiffly. The water stopped. Steve must have guessed wrong, Bucky didn't make a sound. His hair slick to his face and jutting out in thick, wet clumps. He kept his head down, staring into the drain.

"Buck." Steve grunted. 

His shoulders shuddered, still moving in heavy gasps. Slowly, he straightened himself, water dripping from his hair into more veins down his back and chest. He swallowed, looked Steve in the eye, began to say something but faltered.

"Bucky," Steve thought his voice sounded like he was under water, made him self conscious.

"I could have killed you, huh?" Bucky managed after a few tense moments, looking down at Steve. 

Steve looked up ruefully at the way Bucky seemed so much broader and taller when they stood face to face like this, "Jesus. Don' give yourself that much credit."

Steve reached up, pressed a graceful hand to the side of Bucky's face. He felt Bucky shudder and swallow and Steve gave a small smile, before realizing this was obstructed by his towel. Bucky's skin was fire, damp, smoother than Steve always expected. Bucky's eyes seemed dark, the coal grey look that overtook them when his head was filling with angry thoughts. Steve wanted them blue and light again, "Come on, we'll sit down'n talk."

Bucky nodded and followed behind Steve like a golem, the order put in his head to sit and talk.

Steve sat first and with Bucky's weight their knees knocked together. Bucky normally would have made a joke, but he stared down at his feet, his spine crooked to fit under the sloped ceiling. Steve sat straight backed next to him, not worried about his height at all. He held his towel up, knowing Bucky would only get his eyes, and wondering if it was better or worse this way.

Bucky swallowed, glancing sideways at Steve. "I...I'm in trouble."

"Buck," Steve exhaled.

"Please, Steve. We need to go out and be seen with some dames." Bucky spoke slowly, pressured. 

Steve lowered his shoulders, "What happened?"

"Please, I don't want to talk about it," Bucky snapped but withdrew, trying to lower his tone back down. He exhaled slowly. "Steve, please. I need you to come with me."

"Why do I gotta go?" Steve was speaking slowly now, several thoughts racing through his head. "What kind of trouble?"

Bucky moved his mouth like he was talking but sound wasn't coming out, he began to tremble, "Steve, please, just don't ask me any more questions. I..."

Steve lowered the towel, knowing the point this would make in Bucky's mind. The darker boy grew blank and quiet and began looking at his feet, his chest heaving. He closed his eyes a moment, then exhaled, seeming to decide on something important.

Bucky lifted up his shirt and turned toward the wall, giving Steve a full view of about thirteen long red welts that were raised over his spine and shoulders. A few had turned purple and bluish, darkening where the blood vessels had burst under the skin. Others had a white line of scarring at their head. Steve slowly reached out and pressed a cold finger below a purple mark where the flesh had broken, sending the other into a small spasm, gasping and flinching away from the contact. Bucky exhaled and Steve studied his small tremors. He cocked his head to the side, ignoring the twisting in his belly. 

He wanted to ask, but refrained, what he'd been hit with. Each welt seemed wider than Steve's fingers, and heavy enough to leave blood vessels spidering away from the impacts. He wanted to ask, but refrained, what had happened. The empty feeling in the pit of his stomach made him forget the bloody nose altogether.

Bucky exhaled, tense, repeating, "I need us to be seen with girls."

"They," Steve muttered but swallowed before he finished the thought. "Buck, you, ...did you get caught with someone at the base?"

Bucky quickly pulled his shirt back down and turned on Steve, his face reddening, "No!"

"I was just!" Steve protested as the other loomed over him, nostrils flaring. "I just," Steve muttered but didn't find an answer. He drew a breath and raised himself up, dropping aside the towel entirely as he hobbled his knees onto the bed to make himself taller than Bucky. 

Steve confidently gripped Bucky's jaw with a cold hand, making the other tremble and draw a breath in surprise. Steve locked eyes on him and gave a bold, certain smile. Bucky's skin was hot and still damp, his pulse hammering against Steve's palm as Steve tipped his face up. His eyes darkened, pupils blown. "I need more practice, I guess. So I'm not so nervous. With the girls."

"Steve, you with me?" The soldier asked.

Steve snapped to attention, realizing he was still standing over the bed and staring at the note he'd slid onto the night stand. The soldier was still laying there, hands tucked behind his head, looking lethargic.

"I," Steve mumbled, looking between the note and the soldier. "I. Yeah. How long..."

"How long have you been standing there? About five minutes." The soldier blinked. There was something mischievous about his eyes, scanning over Steve with some hint of amusement.

"How long have you been awake?" Steve warbled, his face twisting into a scowl.

The soldier raised his eyebrows, "Me? Since JARVIS told you there was a visitor."

"And you just have been lying here?"

"I wanted to see what you would do." The soldier blinked at the accusation in Steve's voice, "Plus, I had the seals."

Steve glanced at the television after the soldier made a small gesture. On the screen, flickering white light showed a family of grey pinnipeds flopping about on an ice floe. The soldier pointed the remote control as quiet scratching sounds blossomed into a disinterested sounding voice over actor reading, "However the male seal tends to have a thicker neck and broader head and muzzle than the female. The Weddell seal face has been compared to that of a cat due to a short mouth line and similarities in the structure of nose and whiskers."

Steve blinked, uncertain how to process this information. "You've been watching PBS." 

"I don't know what that is." The soldier answered in kind, matching tone and Steve's cadence flawlessly. "I have been watching animals shows, yes. I think like them."

Steve blinked again at the seals, feeling his stomach had dropped out. He looked back at the soldier, who remained reclined and gave Steve a genuine, optimistic look. His eyebrows still raised, Steve noted. How the hell was it he could be doing so well, when Steve felt like he was falling apart. 

"Move over." Steve grunted, and flopped onto the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya! Thanks for reading :)  
> Part 1 of this story is here: [Muscle Memory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3549494)  
> For some fun random fan art, updates about fan fics, and such check this out: [tumblr](http://asolitarygrape.tumblr.com/)


	6. Chapter 6

Steve fell into sleep effortlessly, in a way he hadn't done since he was a child. He lay there, watching the seals. And then after seals was a documentary on orcas. And somewhere between the history of whaling practices and the effects of inbreeding, Steve had drifted away from reality. He wasn't certain how he had managed it. He had been so anxious lying on that bed. The soldier had stayed next to him, enrapt in his animals, occasionally murmuring about a fact that had just been presented with a mild 'huh' or 'that can't be real'. Steve had studied this, noted it, never responded. He didn't remember Bucky ever taking a particular interest in animals. But then again, there hadn't been a real opportunity for it growing up. There was the zoo, Steve supposed, but he didn't remember if he and Bucky had ever been to one, and he doubted Bucky would have gone with anyone else. 

Maybe when things calm down, Steve had mused, watching the soldier's face seem to light up, his eyes staying that light, bright blue, maybe we could go to a zoo. All the zoos. Every zoo. Steve assumed the solider would like that.

When he drifted off, somewhere between the whaling and the inbreeding, the soldier had still been very much awake. He'd regarded Steve quietly once he noticed he'd fallen away. Initially the soldier hadn't noticed anything, and the silence perturbed him. He caught himself listening to make sure Steve was breathing, and upon confirming that he was, the soldier had chewed the inside of his mouth and watched the orcas for a few minutes.

An anxiety started to build which the soldier couldn't place, so he started stealing small glances at Steve. He turned the volume lower on his show to hear the steady breaths, count them. But he still felt nervous. He eventually worked up the nerve to reach over and press his hand to Steve's chest, now completely ignoring the orcas. Steve didn't stir, seemed perfectly fine with his gesture. And somewhere in his muscles, the soldier could feel a faint pulse that made the anxiety go away.

The soldier sighed and leant back and looked at the orcas. 

A second documentary about orcas came on, this time about SeaWorld. After a thrilling hour or two regarding the dangers of orcas kept in captivity, discussing the death of Dawn Bracheau, the soldier considered waking Steve up. The soldier tilted his head as they discussed the SeaWorld trainer's body being dragged under water as the whale became aggressive. For some reason that the soldier wasn't willing to look into, when they said her arm had been severed he knotted up like a pretzel.

Leaning into the headboard, he curled his knees up under his chin. Exhaling hard, the soldier hugged his legs. Count back from ten, breathe, reality is here and now. His arm gave a small mechanical whirl when he tightened his grip. He lasted maybe thirty seconds after that before involuntarily banging his back against the headboard, rocking on his hips. 

Steve bolted upright, causing the soldier to pull into himself tighter, self conscious, anxious. But the blonde spun around and immediately pulled the soldier into a hug.

The soldier's eyes went wide and he looked at the room from over Steve's shoulder. His first reaction to a loud noise that close to his head would not have been a hug. His first reaction might have involved knives and pressure points and choking. But Steve wrapped around him as if he was a part of his clothing, part of his musculature. The soldier tilted his head at Steve. His panic dissipated quickly, seeming to transfer into the blonde.

And Steve accepted it. He clutched onto the soldier for dear life, tightening his arms and burying his face, hyperventilating. 

"I'm sorry," The soldier whispered, but his arms were pinned down around him. He didn't know what more he could do. "Sorry, Steve. I didn't mean to."

Steve nuzzled into him until his breathing slowed, broke the embrace, and began rubbing his face with the heel of his hand.

"What?" Steve grumbled, digging into his eye socket. He kept rubbing it, shaking his head along with it. A strangled yawn and he leant back. "What...?"

"You all right there, Cap?" The soldier grunted. Steve looked up with only one eye open, the other squeezed tight while his face scrunched up.

Steve dug his hands back into his eyes again and gave a gurgled, hoarse, "What time is it?"

Before the soldier could answer Steve gave a second, equally groggy, "Imma make coffee."

He attempted to stand up directly on the bed and quickly teetered, slumping over, scrambling in a roll off of the mattress. The soldier leant forward and watched the performance, thinking Steve looked like the baby giraffe he had been watching earlier. He'd give a small attempt, move forward a few inches, then settle into the position he'd fallen in. Steve kept grumbling to himself as he worked up to standing, taking sideways and off balance steps into the living room.

"It's 2 a.m." The soldier called once he remembered Steve had asked.

"Yes! Coffee!" It came like bark. A loud twang and some footsteps that sounds like slaps erupted as Steve walked into a cabinet door.

The soldier sprang up to his feet, bounding over the mattress and out into the living room, scooping Steve up.

"Noooo," Steve argued, swatting at him. "Get offa me, m'fine, Buck!"

"Come on," The soldier grabbed Steve's wrists and tried to pull him up. Steve twisted away. "If I didn't already know you can't get drunk, I'd think you were drunk. This isn't a good look."

Steve mumbled something that ended in 'good look' and twisted again, laughing at his own joke. The soldier let him drop to the floor and grunted at him. "You aren't even awake, are you?"

"You're aren't e-even awake, even!" Steve taunted loudly. The soldier tilted his head to the side, standing over him. Steve stared back with his eyes barely more than azure slits, glittering in the otherwise darkened room. The candles must have burnt out a while ago because the room now had a smoky coconut haze that still clung to the upholstery despite the opened windows, the cool breeze pushing the curtains. The soldier kept looking back at Steve's face, some neuron firing blindly, some faint memory attempting to cross his path. His crooked nose, an over confident crooked smile. His too damn tight shirt pulling on his chest. He was breathing heavy, expectantly. He seemed to be signaling something up to the soldier, but the soldier wasn't receiving. 

"Come on," The soldier grunted, but his voice sounded softer. "There's a documentary on about you in a half hour, you can tell me all the things wrong with it."

Steve's gaze faltered. The over confidence draining out of him, he looked up the length of the soldier and murmured something. Worked his way up to his own feet, the soldier there to steady him. He grumbled, "Coffee."

Steve collapsed back onto his bed and stared at the ceiling, a quiet thud in the back of his head while the soldier shifted around in his living room. He's going to bring me coffee, Steve decided. 

After a few moments the soldier returned, informed Steve he'd mastered the coffee maker, that he had every confidence he understood technology, and that he in no way needed help. Steve smiled, blinked more alertness into his eyes, felt sad. Felt overwhelmingly sad. He pulled the pillow over his face and let the soldier figure it out himself.

When the soldier did finally come back into the room, he brought a mug with him. He set it on the nightstand and examined Steve's lack of response. Steve thought he had a strong response. As soon as he heard the footsteps padding into the room he went completely still, held his breath, kept the pillow over his face and pretended not to exist.

The soldier sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped with the weight, his knee knocked into him. Steve exhaled painfully. He was awake now. He remembered where he was, he knew how he'd acted. He pushed the pillow down tightly, wondering if it was possible to smother yourself or if you would pass out and inadvertently be saved. He'd wondered this before. And he'd probably have a better chance crushing his own larynx.

"Steve," The soldier pressed.

He pulled the pillow away, mustered the best plastered on smile he could, "Yes?"

"You okay?" The soldier's head was still tilted. He looked like his neck might start to bend that way all the time, grow into the position like a sapling that had been tied down. Steve pulled a wider smile and began to speak, but the soldier already cocked an eyebrow and shook his head at him.

"M'fine, Buck." Steve exhaled. "Just tired."

"I can leave if y--"

"No!" Steve nearly choked on saliva, surprising himself. He cleared his throat, "No, I want you to stay. Let's watch the thing. Might be funny."

The soldier looked over him, unconvinced. He nudged his head and Steve moved to the side, leaving space for the soldier to lie next to him. Steve felt acutely aware of himself, anxiety rising up his chest because he kept glancing over and seeing Bucky. He wondered if this was how Peggy felt every time the recognition left and reentered her eyes and she'd ask 'Steve?' He would be left feeling hollow and heart broken and something in him twisting into a smile and saying 'yes, Peggy. It's me.'

He wanted to tell the solider he understood that he was being humored, that he had done it himself enough times to know the awkward pain it brought. How it felt to constantly be reminded that his life wasn't what he knew it as. He hated that he was doing that to Bucky, and that he also wasn't.

The soldier settled back onto the bed, staring toward the remote he'd picked up in his travels. He flitted around with channels until he found the right one, turning the volume up for Steve. Steve wanted to point out he didn't have any problems with his hearing, not a damn one since the super soldier serum. But he smiled and fostered the thought that Bucky was doing that, not the soldier. Because Bucky would have thought Steve couldn't hear it, would have turned up the radio on instinct, even after _Captain America_ , because it was habit.

"How are we gonna do this?" Steve asked sheepishly, watching the biography channel broadcast commercials for a variety of late night inventions. "We can't pause it. You want me to just talk over it?"

"Sure," The soldier mumbled, his attention clearly fixated on the current advertisement for a ceramic ball that cleaned clothing by changing the pH of water and banging around in your washing machine. The soldier was looking skeptically at this as a smiling, red lipped woman insisted, "Throw out your detergent forever!"

The commercial was exhaustingly long, with terrible actors repeatedly spilling items on their clothing and being dissuaded as they walked to their washing machines. Just as they reached for the soap the red lipped woman would say "Hay! Not so fast! You don't need laundry detergent!"

It lasted an agonizing seven minutes, each of which the soldier was enrapt by. Steve presumed that even if Bucky had been awake for the past seventy or so years, he probably never got to see all of the things technology had to offer. Including as-seen-on-TV! miracles. Steve puzzled if this was why he was digesting wildlife documentaries like he planned to be the next Jacques Cousteau. 

Steve didn't notice that the commercial had ended. His eyes were still on the soldier, on the bright look on his face, the clarity in his eyes that seemed to radiate around him like a halo. 

The soldier glanced at him, eyes full of light and expectation. Steve blinked, still in his reverie, not understanding the look. The soldier dimmed, nudged Steve as his face fell into a look of scrutiny. "Pay attention."

"Oh, right." Steve muttered and readjusted himself to sit up beside the soldier, watching an image of a talking head--a man who looked to be about in his forties, speaking in a stern voice. His hair was brown but thinning and his rectangular face looked like it might have enjoyed a drink too many at the end of the day. The bubble beneath his name read "Steve Rogers: A Biography" Undersigned "Author" which was overlaid with Booktv C-SPAN2. Steve blinked, not recognizing the man's name.

"That's Gary Worther," the soldier checked Steve lightly with his shoulder. "I been to his house."

Gary Worther continued rambling on while the soldier added, "He's a lot older now. This must be pretty old."

Steve blinked at this and looked back at the image of Gary Worther who had just been asked 'Who is Steve Rogers?'

"Well," Gary tilted his head to the side thoughtfully and put some effort into his monotone answer. "Steve Rogers was one of the most beloved private citizens, which is one of the things that struck me when I began doing my research for this book. Many people remain stuck thinking of Steve Rogers as Captain America, and Captain America was, of course, anything from a private citizen. Steve Rogers, however, was a very private man and one who assumed the Captain America role on behalf of the private sector. People forget that he was not a soldier, he was initially a USO mascot. However, he took initiative and really embodied that Captain America image when he chose to go off script and join the fight.

"Asking who Captain America is is a lot like asking who Americans are. The answer was Steve Rogers."

"Ugggh." Steve narrowed his eyes and groaned. The soldier looked at him innocently.

Steve felt the soldier's eyes burning on the side of his face and muttered, "I may vomit."

"Oh, it's not that bad." the soldier rolled his eyes.

"It's hard to imagine how popular and important the Captain America brand was at the time," Gary Worther continued, sweating under the fluorescent studio lighting. "Steve Rogers, though, was never a popular man.

"He was, actually, kind of a tyrant."

"What?" Steve snapped. The soldier nudged him again and Steve fell silent.

"Steven Grant Rogers was a very large personality for a not very large man. I can get into the history we all know of Steve's transformation into Captain America, but it really begins with the man."

Gary Worther's interview was cut off and replaced with a semi-impassioned voice over actor and several slow moving photographs of Steve Rogers at his basic training. Each image showed a small, young Steve squinting at something or other, engaged in some task. The voice over murmured a flowery diatribe, "Very little unfortunately is documented of Steve Rogers' early life. Most records of him begin with his basic training at Camp Lehigh. It is known that he had applied for conscription to the United States Army upwards of twenty times, often changing his name or information in order to reapply. It was his determination and willingness to bend rules which caught the attention of General--,"

"No." Steve grunted. The soldier looked over at him expectantly and Steve growled at the television. "I met Dr. Erksine at the New York World's Fair. It had nothing to do with any general."

"--Rogers impressed military higher ups with his--"

"They hated my guts." Steve cut the television off. He gave the soldier a small smile, as the other appeared glued to watching Steve watch the documentary. Steve added, "They kept threatening to kick me out. There were loads of arguments about why I was even there."

The television cut back to Gary Worther. "The first time I started to think of how Steve Rogers was separate from the whole Captain America mythos, was probably when--I know we've all seen the flyers or mailers for the Rogers Foundation of America. I remember looking at the image they had used--back in the 60s, the retro 30s propaganda posters of Captain America. I remember looking at it and thinking back to my history classes in college and--there were no recorded family members, no friends, the image didn't even resemble Rogers. And I remember thinking , if Steve Rogers could see this, what would he say?

"And the answer I came up with was, Steve would have thought he could have drawn it better." Worther concluded.

Steve smirked at that and, feeling the side of his face burning, sneaked a glance at the soldier. He was still glued to Steve's face, examining every reaction methodically. Steve raised his eyebrows at him, "You got a problem, Barnes?"

"No," The soldier answered truthfully. He blinked, not catching the drift, which only made Steve smile and stare back forward--hoping he didn't blush.

It was that over enthused voice actor again, "Steve Rogers was documented as a fine arts student at New York University, however only ever attended a single semester. His mother died shortly after he began schooling from complications of pneumonia. Sarah Rogers was a registered nurse with New York Methodist Hospital. His father had died before Steve's birth, reportedly during World War I, though there is no secure documentation of Roger's parentage. Following Sarah Roger's death, Rogers left the school. With no ties or,"

Steve cut the narrator off, "My father," He mumbled. The soldier looked at him quietly while Steve wormed out, "My father was a drunk."

Steve left it at that.

"Rogers found work as a WPA artist. The Works Progress Administration was the most ambitious of the American New Deal agencies, employing millions of unskilled laborers during the Great Depression. In a much smaller but more famous project, the Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers and actors in large arts and literacy projects. Retrospectively, this project owes it's fame to Steve Rogers' association as a freelance illustrator for the WPA."

"Sure was nice of you to do that for FDR." The soldier mumbled.

Steve turned a beet red and grinned, "Hey, man. Someone had to."

"--As Rogers has been typically described as a loner figure with very limited ties to others, many have argued that Rogers saw himself as a man whose only connection was to his country. While the prevailing propaganda has portrayed Rogers as an everyman who considered America to be his family,"

"Bleh," Steve interrupted and the soldier shoulder checked him again.

"James Barnes captured the public interest," The voice over actor was laying it on thick. Steve gave a side glance to the soldier, who seemed to be looking at the screen now with some interest. His face had gotten serious, studious. He was frowning and Steve could see lines forming around his eyes and mouth.

"Barnes and Rogers met as children and," Steve kept watching the soldier, much in the way the soldier had been studying him. That same apprehension, worry, waiting for something he thought he knew to be corrected.

Steve exhaled sadly and looked back to the screen, deciding he ought to pay attention in case he did need to say something damning, or invalidating.

Our friend Gary Worther was back up there looking relaxed now. "There is no Steve Rogers without Bucky Barnes. It's easy to forget that Rogers spent most of his life as a 90lb Irish street urchin who liked to get into back alley fights. Just because our mental image of Steve Rogers is robust or grandiose, that isn't how Steve would have seen it, and that isn't how Bucky would have seen it. Sergeant Barnes was Rogers' go-to man in World War II because he always had been.

"While people like to speculate that Steve was so adamant about joining the military because he had no other ties and had his sense of duty and obligation, many people forget that James Barnes was already a sergeant before Steve successfully joined Operation: Rebirth. The Steve Rogers portrayed in his letters and as remembered by the people who knew him, would not have backed down from the greatest back alley fight there was. Not knowing his best friend was already moving up the military ladder."

The soldier screwed up his face and gave an anxious side glance in Steve's direction. Steve took a breath, didn't overtly move to correct Gary, just mumbled, "Complicated."

"Barnes came from a large family of," The voice over began and Steve immediately looked down at his hands, picking at his nails. The soldier frowned, "Pay attention, huh?"

Steve took a deep breath, eyes still on his hands, "M'listening."

"--Barnes was particularly close with his sister Rebecca Barnes Proctor, all letters recovered from his time in the military--,"

Steve was biting the inside of his mouth.

"--And his father, Colonel George M. Barnes," The narrator was saying. Steve grunted, an involuntary spasm.

"What?" The soldier asked.

Steve's eyes were glued now to his hands, a tremble coming at his lip, "Nothing."

The soldier turned toward him, scowling, "That didn't sound like nothing, that sounded like,"

"--Left the home young to join the military after his father's death at the start of World War II," the narrator went on.

"It's nothing," Steve snapped. He dug his nails into his hand too hard, might have been enough to break skin, he didn't think about it, kept scratching.

"--Barnes equally as motivated to," The narrator continued.

"Maybe this was a bad idea," Steve muttered. The soldier looked at him, then at images of someone's life flashing on the screen. He lifted up the remote and shut it off. Steve watched him furtively with his head bowed.

The soldier took a few moments in the silent room, swallowing back several thoughts before prodding, "Okay. I'm assuming they're wrong about--?"

"You didn't join the military because George died, you were drafted." Steve exhaled slowly, trying to imagine a set of hands on his shoulders, holding him down and still, giving him enough pressure to not mind saying that name. "We were both drafted, initially. They took you, wouldn't take me. Congratulated me, even, on getting to make it out alive. And I had to come back, and I had to tell you. And all anyone was thinking was that I made it out alive; that being a sick piece of shit finally had an upside. And I just kept thinking that if I was making it out alive, everyone else was going to die. You were going to die. And it wasn't fair. And I hated everything about that.

"I hated being awake at night and staring at the ceiling and knowing that 'oh joy, I get to keep doing this'. My life wasn't...wasn't anything worth saving. And you--he--you would get so mad at me, so dumb screaming mad, every time I said I wanted to go.

"And he--you were so mad you were going. You didn't want to go. You didn't want to, and you had to. And I wanted to, and I couldn't. And none of it was fair." Steve grumbled out in a breath. 

The soldier looked thoughtfully at this, "Barnes did not want to be a sergeant."

"Barnes wanted nothing to do with the military, period." Steve closed his eyes, counted to three, breathe. "I mean, that's not fair. He didn't mind. He would have gone, he did go, no complaints. It's just...he didn't want to be that military guy. He didn't want to be _George._ "

"Oh," The soldier blinked, his ears fixed to the tone in Steve's voice. Steve drew a ragged breath, let himself fall back against the head board with a sigh. The soldier turned to watch him, the ashen expression. Steve looked tired, so much more tired than the solider had realized. "We can talk about this later,...or never?"

"It's fine," Steve exhaled slowly. "Do you want me to say this like it's you, or?"

"That's okay." The soldier thought about this quietly. "You can say it's me."

"Your ma died when we were kids." Steve rubbed his face with the heel of his hand, working a groove into his eye socket. "I remember when your dad got stationed in Jersey, that's when you moved to Brooklyn. Becca was too little when your ma died; your dad had shipped her off to a boarding school, some nursery deal, but he kept you around. I mean, I'm glad he kept you around, but it wasn't....it wasn't good for you.

"By the time we were twelve you were walking out of classes, near getting kicked out of school. Knew how to hotwire a car. Always hanging around military guys, trying to top each other's stories, always getting into trouble with adults but getting to walk off because you were a kid. All the corner cops knew you.

"You told me one time I was your good influence." Steve exhaled and lowered his hand, letting the sting in his eye stay there. He swallowed, "Jiminy goddamn Cricket. You actually called me that, once. Never tried it again. I pitched hell at you for it. Thought you were calling me small.

"You only liked me at first because you felt bad for me," Steve mumbled. "You'da never put it that way, or made me feel that way on purpose, but I felt it. You were a little kid always around big, angry guys. I was someone you could be the big, angry guy for. 

"Every time someone looked at me wrong, every time I opened my mouth where I shouldn', every time I got caught up, there was James Barnes ready to play the big, scary older brother.

"Didn't seem like you had any family," Steve added. " _George_ was never around. You clung onto me, onto my ma, because it was as far from what you had as there is. You used to say all the time you were in love with my ma, gonna marry her and be a real father to me. And I'd get so damn angry and raw at you, and you'd just laugh.

"Ma always said you were a good kid in a bad way. Your heart was good, and that was all she cared about. She'd even tease me about how handsome you were, some shit.

"You got in trouble, started getting a little too cocky for your own good. You got in fists fights on the base. You had your own little racket going, bringing in contraband from Jersey and New York into the army base and Lehigh. And then George died.

"Parachute accident," Steve clarified and swallowed. "Though likely he was just drunk like always. Put you off. You were terrified of heights after that. Couldn't look down your own nose without getting worked up.

"You'd get so scared," Steve mumbled, looking back at his hands, picking apart the scabs and cracks in his skin. "I'd never seen you scared before. Not even with _George_. You used to just get so quiet, so solemn when something was bothering you. But after he died, you got jumpy. You'd sneak into my room and make me..." Steve looked down at his hands. Blood was springing up in about four spots. He folded his fingers, thinking this might help.

"You moved in with us when you were sixteen. You'd gotten drunk, got into a fight on the base, knocked out two sailors and broke an MPs wrist. They wanted you arrested. Sixteen in the state of New York, yaknow. To go to jail. I heard they're just starting to change that law _now_.

"So you moved in with us," Steve exhaled carefully. His eyes darted back up to the soldier's face to see how this had played out. "There's more details, for sure. But that's it. That's the basic history of how you ended up stuck with me. You got a job, moved out. My ma died, you moved back in. You didn't want me to be alone. You got drafted, I tried to follow suit. The whole regal history of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes."

The soldier studied Steve's face, his tired and exasperated expression. His eyes bounced from thing to thing around him. "What was the thing? I made you do when I was scared?"

Steve's face was stone, looking unemotional and unyielding. He pushed out a few breaths before reaching his hand out, "Here,"

The soldier stared at this gesture with worry filling into the lines of his face. Steve's arm remained outstretched, looking at the soldier which his eyebrows lifting.

"What do I?" The soldier had a slight color illuminate his face.

"Come here." Steve's voice was stern, not to be played with.

The soldier swallowed, one of his new emotions flooding his head and his stomach. He didn't think he wanted this. He thought he might want to curl into a ball and stop existing. Steve's face didn't soften, didn't lighten. There was a heaviness in the room clinging around the soldier's mind.

Steve sat up, his arm still outstretched, wrapping it around the soldier's neck and pulling him back, pulling him into Steve's chest. Crushing him down so that his temple hit the other's collar bone and Steve wrapped his other arm around him with a sigh.

The soldier squirmed but adjusted himself, letting his cheek rest at Steve's sternum. Steve began to rub small circles into the nape of his neck and the soldier went very still. His whole body stopped processing thought, and instead Steve slid his fingers gingerly over his spine until the soldier relaxed against him.

"You okay?" Steve prompted. The soldier squirmed again, but had difficulty feeling awkward or uncomfortable or pushing himself away when Steve's fingers worked into furrows under his shoulder blade. He didn't respond, his face melting into Steve's shirt.

"Okay," Steve said calmly, but he was anything but calm. He was tense and he was aching and the soldier could feel that. He wanted to argue with Steve's voice, call him out, yell at him. Steve muttered, "Ten...nine..."

The soldier closed his eyes. Count back from ten, breathe, reality. This is now and there's nothing else. He shuddered when Steve kept whispering, "You're right here, with me, there's nothing else."

The soldier smiled, but wasn't sure he wanted to. He tucked his face into Steve's chest, in the dark, the rest of the world closed and locked away and out of his senses. And for the moment he only had Steve, the sounds inside of Steve and his voice and his hands and nothing else. And the soldier blurted, "Did I love you?"

Steve shifted uncomfortably.

The soldier felt panic start to creep in, because he could feel it in Steve also. "I mean, um. What I meant, it's just,"

"Yes," Steve was quiet.

The soldier relaxed, "Okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!!  
> Thanks for reading :)
> 
> For part 1 of this series, [Muscle Memory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3549494)  
> For updates to this series, funny things, fan art I like, I'mma put this here: [tumblr](http://asolitarygrape.tumblr.com/)


	7. Chapter 7

Natasha walked back into the conference room, running a hand through her hair. She'd been reconsidering the curling iron, and if she didn't view her appearance as a large part of her work she wouldn't bother with it. Or with the straightening iron. In fact, Natasha pursed her lips, she felt like swearing off all Iron right about now.

Tony turned in the chair with a fluid motion, nearly tipping out of it, "What did he say? Did he tell you where he was? Did he apologize? Is he getting us presents?"

Natasha scoffed and walked past him, dropping into a chair next to Bruce and cupping her chin. She drew a swirl pattern on the conference table with a drop of condensation off of Bruce's water bottle. He looked between her and Tony and cleared his throat politely, "I don't think she wants to talk about it."

"But," Tony narrowed his eyes and shook his head. "We need to know what's going on with him. If he can--,"

"Tony," Bruce cleared his throat, "I get the impression that Nat will tell us what she found out when she's ready. There's probably some sensitive info you should, erm, be respectful of."

Natasha shot her eyes toward Bruce with a wide and obvious smile, swallowing back some venom.

Tony slumped back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, spinning until his knees hit the conference table and then looping into the other direction. After a beat, unable to contain his energy, he pressed, "Where's Wilson? Wilson talked to him right? Does Wilson know where he was? Where is he going now? Does he need help?"

"Tony," Natasha snapped, turning her chair toward him. His face fell and eyebrows raised as if he was a puppy who had been caught knocking over the trash bin. "Give him some time. If you keep jumping down his throat he's going to keep pulling away."

"But is he okay?" Tony pressed.

Natasha frowned and drew a slow breath, leaning back in her chair.

Tony lowered into himself and frowned, smugly. He turned toward Bruce looking for some moral support, but the green guy only shook his head quietly behind Natasha's back.

"I just want to know he's all right," Tony insisted, but crossed his arms and tried to show he was being calm. "He's the only person, in history, to be frozen in a block of ice for the better part of a century, who is still up strolling around. None of you ever worry about that?"

Tony clucked his tongue at Natasha's death stare. He turned toward the debriefing rooms and slanted his jaw, muttering, "M'not being unreasonable..."

"Tony!" Natasha snapped.

Tony groaned loudly and leant back, tipping the chair and spinning. He sat up alert after a moment, "But what if..."

"TONY!" Natasha shouted it. 

Bruce bit into his lip and turned his chair away from both of them, putting them behind his back to hide the involuntary smile.

"Everyone's being mean to me today," Tony grumbled.

Natasha took a very slow breath and closed her eyes before settling on a response, "Look, Tony, I appreciate that you're worried about him. I'm worried about him. That he hasn't been acting like himself-- but _no one_ has been. And honestly, how much of _himself_ do any of us know?

"He's not like us," Natasha waved her hand dramatically. "He's not here because he was broken at one point and is trying to fix it! There's no redemption story for Captain America! He's not...he's not broken."

She lowered her hand and screwed her face up at the thought. She turned slowly toward Tony and pursed her lips, "What do you know about his life before the war?"

"Me?" Tony raised his eyebrows, he looked around the room. "I don't know. 'Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield.' The whole, tiny guy to bug guy routine, only minus the green body paint." 

Tony winked at Bruce who rolled his eyes and picked at his water bottle.

"Yeah, but," Natasha insisted, "Do we know anything about him that isn't in the Smithsonian? I've heard the profile, but that's not the person we talk to. We talk to him all the time. There are times I see him everyday, but,...I don't know what kind of music he likes or if he even listens to music or..."

"You don't know what kind of music I like." Tony retorted. 

Natasha froze and blanked her expression, "What kind of music do you like, Tony?"

Tony tipped his head to the side and shrugged his shoulders up to his ears, "That's a complicated question, I mean I like a lot of music--,"

"Tony!" Natasha barked. Bruce was covering his face with one hand and leaning away again.

"My point is!" Natasha scowled, "We haven't been there for him, not the way we should be. Not--not like we're his friends. _I'm_ the only one who has spent that much time with him out of all of us, and he still does and says things that confuse the hell out of me. Because it's not who I thought Captain America was. I had to meet Steve Rogers.

"This is one of those things where we don't know him." She swallowed and put her hands on the table, "This is something he has to tell us himself, we won't find it in a history book."

"So," Tony rolled his eyes around the room, "It has to do with the Winter Soldier."

"I don't know that." Natasha sighed.

"No, but you said 'he's not broken' like that seemed to mean something to you and then you immediately transitioned to asking about his past and _knowing_ him, you didn't flinch when the first thing I said was about Bucky Barnes, then you rather _demeaningly_ said we aren't _his_ friends, but we're apparently Captain America's friends and...were you not trying to do that rabbit hole? Did I just jump on your shit....I jumped on your shit, I'm sorry. You tell us."

Natasha's eyes were cobalt slits, eyebrows hunched enough to make a normal man beg forgiveness and slit his throat on the spot. Her mouth set, she swallowed, opened,

"I'll stop talking," Tony added.

She closed her mouth again, glared additional daggers, then sighed, "I don't know if Steve being missing has to do with Sergeant Barnes. But I know Steve has been hell bent on finding him. That is common knowledge, Tony. You did not _jump on my shit_ by saying it."

Natasha rose and walked back out of the conference room, giving a small nod to Bruce as she stormed past. Tony turned the chair to watch her leave, then turned the chair to look innocently at Bruce, "But I'm right, right? That's totally where she was going with that?"

Bruce blinked at Tony, shrugged, then resumed picking at his water bottle.

"Come on," Tony mumbled, looking down. "Not you too."

Bruce swallowed and sat up, "I think she was expecting you to have more of a compassionate response. Sort of validating why Steve might be acting oddly..."

Tony narrowed his eyes, "No.... _Really?_...No, she knows me better than that."

"I don't think knowing you is the problem." Bruce hummed.

Tony tutted and crossed his arms, "Nah."

\---

 

"--Their large ears enable heat loss. The upper lip and nose form the trunk which acts as a fifth limb, sound amplifier, and an important method of touch for the African Elephant." The television reported calmly. The soldier sat on the edge of the bed, kicking out his legs and enrapt, staring at the screen.

He looked more drawn to the elephants than he had any other animal thus far. He found them beautiful and he kept asking Steve, "But taller than me?"

"Yes," Steve hummed, not looking up.

"Like, how many of me?"

Steve laughed, "I'm not sure, Buck. Two?"

The soldier tilted his head, as he did, and drew a slow long breath. He stared wistfully, a look of longing crossing his face.

Steve gave a small smile, lying on his stomach beside him, sketching an elephant which the soldier kept insisting he needed drawings of. Each time something particularly noteworthy was said on the screen, the soldier would turn to Steve and repeat it.

"The largest recorded individual stood four meters tall at the shoulders and weighed ten long tons." The television informed them.

The soldier looked worriedly to Steve, "How many is that?"

"You're 5'9"." Steve said thoughtfully. "So, a little more than two of you? Like two and a quarter, maybe?"

The soldier looked back to the television, "But that's just to its shoulder."

"Yep."

The solider nodded thoughtfully.

Steve swallowed back an old feeling that had gripped at his chest and huffed toward the sketchbook in his hands. A series of pastels were laid out around him, which he grabbed at blindly and smeared some color into his sheets. He wasn't terribly worried about it, but the soldier would look and point out, "You got red on it." Or "You're almost out of black."

Now the man doing the voice over narration was talking about having tusks and the soldier was completely lost in watching his. His hands politely folded into his lap, he leant forward as if this would help him learn the information. He reported out to Steve, "Elephants have families. Ten females and their babies, with an older female who leads them around. They're a family. And the males form alliances with other males as they get older. And they can make sounds humans can't hear to call to mates. And when they mate they hold each others trunks."

"Mm," Steve mumbled, but he was chewing on his lip and licking his lip and staring intensely at the image he was sketching. He dropped a grey nub and reached blindly until the soldier handed him a blue one.

He hummed a thank you and kept sketching.

The soldier looked at him and recognized he was now a million miles away and no information regarding the elephants could reach him, regardless of how important the soldier found it.

Steve didn't notice the soldier had put the television on mute, and had no awareness for the amount of time the soldier spent observing Steve as he drew, until the soldier cleared his throat. "Have you ever drawn me?"

"What?" Steve looked up and caught a full sight of the soldier's blue eyes looking into his. He flinched at the color, at the sincerity.

"I-I've drawn Bucky." Steve responded stiffly.

"But have you drawn me?" The soldier blinked, an innocence radiating off of him. His brows creased and he seemed so genuine that Steve trembled in answering, "Yes."

"Can I see them?"

"Maybe," Steve hesitated, "Eventually, I'm....I'm not ready for..."

"You don't have a problem showing me the elephant," The soldier pointed out, tilting his head.

"Yeah, but," Steve swallowed.

"The elephant is beautiful, Steve." He added with a sigh.

Steve found himself breathing heavy, his eyes still attached to the soldier's, fixed there. Held. His muscles relaxed and his brain insisted, 'It's Bucky.'

"You want to see if you're beautiful?" Steve asked and the soldier flushed a shade of pink. Steve smiled at him and went back to drawing. 

"How do you draw?" The soldier asked, tilting his head. "I mean, if you draw me, what do I have to do?"

"You don't have to do anything," Steve smiled. "Historically, that was your favorite part."

"I mean," The soldier tipped his head to the side, his mane of hair wooshing over like a separate creature. He pursed his lips in thought and then slowly came to a decision and held out his arm.

Steve blinked at the gesture. "I don't understand."

"You haven't looked at it." The soldier cleared his throat. His face seemed worried, convinced that there was some rejection about to take place. And Steve saw it. "You don't look at it."

Steve was caught in his eyes again, sitting up and pushing aside his pastels and sketchbook. He brought his legs around and sat side by side with the solider, "Okay. Let me see."

The soldier held out his arm, his confidence waning and Steve took his wrist in his hand and flinched, turning the arm side to side. It made small mechanical whirls and buzzes when the plates rearranged themselves, but otherwise it wasn't what he had expected. It was warm. And Steve bit his lip and turned the soldier's arm again, watching the plates shift into position, rattling against each other like dominoes falling. There was a thrum of electricity through it, though Steve was certain there was something more than electricity and more than he could understand powering it.

The soldier gulped and watched Steve's face, trying to decide if Steve was going to throw his arm aside and tell him to keep it covered, or not. 

"Well," Steve muttered and the soldier flinched, waiting for the verdict, "if I'm going to draw it..."

Steve ran his fingers along the metal slats and felt the indentations, tried to understand the way the armor rearranged itself to allow for movement. Movement would be important; more important than negative space or shading. He saw the soldier tremble, felt the tremor through the arm. "How much feeling does it have?"

"All of it," The soldier responded helpfully. He exhaled, "I control it completely. Even if,"

"Even if what?" Steve pressed, his hands feeling over what would have been a bicep.

"Even if it comes off," The soldier looked shy.

"Shut up," Steve snapped at him.

The soldier had color illuminate his face, but it stayed burning there and he smiled, "The arm is programmed to be linked to my nervous system. I control it, no matter what happens to it."

He smiled, a strange sense of mystery burning into his eyes, "One time I left a finger in a target's pocket for three weeks so I could know all of her movements and plan the kill order."

Steve didn't mean to flinch, particularly when the soldier sounded so proud of himself, and he tried to quickly correct, "Pieces can just detach?"

"No," The soldier responded, watching as Steve ran his fingers a little more forcefully at his seams. "Just certain parts. I won't tell you which. I need them."

"Wouldn't expect you to." Steve smiled.

His hand graced over the metal, sliding down where he would have expected there to be veins and tendons, watching the soldier splay his fingers for Steve to fit his hand into. Steve sighed, running his hand back up along the soldier's forearm. His breath caught, he suddenly felt overwhelmingly weak.

"What's wrong?" The soldier prompted, still waiting for the shoe to drop. 

Steve shook his head, running his fingers again back over a patch of the soldier's forearm. "Nothing, it's just...Bucky had a scar here."

The soldier blinked, "You haven't....You've been calling _me_ Bucky."

"No," Steve quickly corrected, "No, you are--you just, you don't have the scar anymore."

The soldier considered this, "What was the scar?"

Steve opened his mouth to respond but sighed in a laugh, "Uh, I bit you."

The soldier looked at his arm seriously and withdrew it. Steve frowned, "I don't mean, I'm sorry. It's...your arm is fine, it's _your_ arm. It's nothing. I just, it's..."

"You put your mark on him," The soldier considered this.

"I," Steve felt his mouth run dry. The room felt out of proportion and suddenly very bright. "Never thought of it like that. Excuse me, a sec..."

Steve popped up to his feet and walked into the bathroom, calling over his shoulder, "Nothing's wrong, I don't mean to, sorry, just...hold on..."

He closed the bathroom door and pressed his back to it, feeling dizzy. One, two, three, breathe. He swallowed and stepped forward, turning the water on to cup it to his face. He breathed heavily, staring down the drain and wondering if his stomach would ever get used to the jumps between normal and bizarre. He straightened his back, looked in the mirror, and "Did you draw a smiley face on the mirror?"

"Yes." The soldier yelled back.

Steve opened his mouth, squinting, the closed it and shrugged. Okay, you can do this, fuck normal.

Steve opened the bathroom door and froze. The soldier looked up innocently, a pastel buried in his fist as he deepened a red arc over his forearm. He smiled, "Like that?"

Steve's breath caught and he swallowed, "Yeah, Buck."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!  
> As always, thank you so much for reading.  
> The next fic in this series, Roll the Bones, will be coming out shortly. In the meantime, you can always look here for updates: [tumblr](http://asolitarygrape.tumblr.com/)
> 
> All of these fics really are intertwined, so if you liked this please check out Part 1:[Muscle Memory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3549494) and look out for part 3 :)

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya!  
> Thanks for reading.  
> This and future sections will be broken into chapters. You can look here: [ tumblr ](http://asolitarygrape.tumblr.com/) for when I post updates to this series.


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